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Journalism of Courage
Attributing the Twenty20 World Cup debacle to a combination of factors with burn-out being just one of the reasons,former India captain Ajit Wadekar has said not much should be made out of the failure because the format is absolutely unpredictable. “This (World cup performance) is a setback. We should not make much out of this failure. You should not judge the performance of the Indian team on the basis of this,” Wadekar said.
“One mistake and you are out. It is an absolutely uncertain game. It is bang bang. We should not overdo (the criticism),” he told reporters on the sidelines of a function here. Wadekar sought to remind every one that Indian team,in the recent past,did exceptionally well. “We have done extremely well in recent series against Australia and other countries. Captain M S Dhoni,till now is considered really a shrewd and cool captain. He could mould the youngsters as a fighting unit,” he said.
Earlier,Krishnamachari Srikkanth,Chairman of Selectors described Twenty20 as a “funny game”,saying anything could happen in just a couple of overs. “One-day Cricket and Test cricket are different,” he said at the screening of a short film “Hum Sab Ek Hain: An Indian Affair”,a movie on Indian cricket including glimpses of the 1983 World Cup victory at the Nehru Centre here last night. He advised cricket fans to pray so that Indian cricket team could carry on their winning run.
Praising Wadekar,Srikkanth said India had won its first Test series against West Indies 1-0 in 1971 under the Mumbai cricketers’ captaincy. “Now we have started winning series quite consistently,” he said. He also appreciated the support extended to Indian cricket team by Non Resident Indians (NRI) and asked the people to have faith in Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men. “Indians residing in foreign country have always supported India. We have some fantastic memories of the 1983 World Cup victory at the Lord’s,” Srikkanth,who was the opener in that team said. Another former cricketer Raja Venkat said,”Last time we won the T20 World Cup when we were underdogs. This time we were the favourites but lost out. It is unfortunate that we lost this time. May be next time we will do better.”
