Free your mind, and the rest will follow

Sometimes anxiety can consume a side; it can make attaining the result so obsessive that it can strangle performance. India have now reached that stage where the thought of the end is so powerful that they hope for the result rather than achieve it as they do in the build-up. Sportsmen do not like to use the word ‘‘choked’’ but they need to look it in the eye. It is a funny phenomenon because it makes teams do things differently on the big day when all they really need to do is continue what they have been doing all along.

At the Asia Cup, though, India didn’t just play the final badly, they played most matches that way. And when they let the dust settle themselves they will see that they ignored the very things that made them a very good one-day side.

India turned the corner in one-day cricket not because a Ganguly or a Tendulkar was scoring big hundreds all the time, not because a Kumble or a Srinath was consistently picking up five wickets but because they started doing the simple things well and so didn’t have to rely on doing the difficult things. Most matches are won by teams that do simple things well. That is what makes New Zealand the number two team in the world. That is what prompts Australia to say they will not do anything different, just the same things better.

In Sri Lanka India were terrible at the simple things all over again. The fielding was ragged, the poorest I have seen in the last few years, and they ran laboriously between wickets. On a large ground in Dambulla for example, where the two would have been the staple shot and the three a familiar event, India plodded rather than ran.

With all outstanding, athletic teams, the running between the wickets plays the role of an extra batsman, the fielding plays the part of the sixth bowler. That is how teams stretch, they give the impression of playing with thirteen, they squeeze more out of the same shot by running hard, they choke the opposition out of the same shot by fielding aggressively.

India didn’t, that is worrying and suggestive of a poor state of mind because a relaxed, eager mind directs the body to do more. India looked rusty and because they didn’t look eager, they were shoddy. The advantage of being an athletic side is that it is independent of form, of the conditions and of the opposition. Batting and bowling can get stifled by how you are playing, by what the opposition serves up, by the nature of the pitch but catching, fielding and running, the best indicators of the health of a team, are easier, more independent acitivities. In the modern game, deficiencies there are unpardonable.

India’s approach to batting, especially in the final, was inexplicable. Normally playing seven batsmen and a stand-in wicket keeper is a luxury but the reason teams might want to do that is to give a licence to the openers to play their shots. Even if the track is a bid dodgy, as it was for the final, the openers should be free to attack because even losing two wickets leaves five batsmen to do the job.

If you have deep pockets you can invest; if you don’t there is no difference between you and the other guy who has lesser money. If the openers have to embrace caution, then it makes the seventh batsman redundant, you might as well play a wicket keeper or an extra bowler or a floating pinch hitter who can bowl a few overs. Asking the openers to defend is a sign of anxiety.

To do well in the three one-day tournaments that follow, India need to free their muscles and their minds. It is something they have done before.