Wake-up call for India

Till the Lahore Test, I had seriously thought that the Indian team has gone the Australian way as far as professionalism is concerned. Espec...

Till the Lahore Test, I had seriously thought that the Indian team has gone the Australian way as far as professionalism is concerned. Especially India’s performances in Australia recently and then the one-day series and Multan Test here served to convince me of that. Alas, all my beliefs were shattered by this embarrassing defeat in Lahore, which finished in less than three-and-a-half days.

Till things moved to Lahore, the Pakistan team was in a royal mess. So much so that captain Inzamam-ul Haq was prepared to step down. However, it was the simple realisation among the players — collectively — that they had to win. That did it for the Pakistanis. They also realised that if they had to put it across India, they would have to play as one cohesive unit and not for themselves as individuals.

Of course, to do well in the international arena, you have to be very aggressive and must possess the will to win. One has to be really positive to do well in these times of heightened competition and raised stakes.

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Therefore, it is really unfortunate that some people are still going on about Rahul Dravid’s declaration, which denied Sachin Tendulkar his double hundred in Multan. Rahul seems to be the new whipping boy for the media and average cricket-watching public in India, because his decision to bat first on the lively Day One Lahore pitch has also been slammed and critics of his captaincy appear to be growing with each passing day.

This kind of criticism leads me to believe that we still hold individuals higher than the team or the institution.

Answer this for me: Why did Rahul take the decisions he did? Did he decide without consulting anyone else around him or was the team thinktank involved in the decision-making? I say that on both occasions he acted in the best interests of the team. It’s just that the decision, or at least the second one, didn’t come off and backfired on him. Yes, in cricket hiccups do happen every once in a way. India’s best option is to treat Lahore as a hiccup and move on. Pakistan have proved that they can’t be taken lightly and that they are willing to put up a soild show.

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