Reasons for my conclusion

There were quite a few things that were going on in my mind before I came to the conclusion that Indian team would lose to Aussies this time around. I am not able to remember everything but am typing down all that I am able to recall.

1. The form of the Indian batsmen when the new season began.

2. The fundamentals of the Indian team aren't yet complete. The fact that Indians haven't beaten West Indies in a Test Series is one such indicator. In the last 10 years, the West Indies team has been virtually at the bottom of the heap and have been declining rapidly. Teams like Australia, Pakistan and South Africa have given them a White wash and even teams like New Zealand and England have given them series drubbing but we haven't even managed to win a series. That somehow shows that we were extremely passionate and seem to be geared up to beat Aussies every time, but haven't really been consistent with other teams. Compare that to the England team who have done very well against everyone, in all conditions in the last five years certainly shows far better fundamentals than the Indians. (See July 25, 2004 blog Post on this blog for the list of achievements of the English team in the last 5-7 years) Indians were bound to fail against Australia as it's certainly not possible to sustain success by sheer passion and inspiration. Passion and Inspiration without the fundamentals in place cannot help all the time.

3. The churning in the Indian Cricketing Establishment was bound to spill over into the Indian National team.

4. The Annual Contracts were in place and being offered immediately. Players like VVS Laxman who play their best only when they are to be dropped, were being offered top-notch salaries, now need not have any reason to give his best.

5. Javagal Srinath was scathing and critical of the Indian Team Management in one of his articles in newspapers few months back and John Wright to whom this was brought to notice during a press conference in England had something very sarcastic to say - "It's good that Srinath is now learning to write well ....", was very very unlike of Wright. He has never been that kind of a person, who would shoot down anybody else's opinion. Something was and is certainly wrong there.

6. India's consistent failure in the One Day tournaments and John Wright's utterings in the media, that he expects some magic soon from the Indian batsmen and his belief that the Indians were one match away from success was again unusual. John Wright seems to be waitng for things to happen. I am afraid something is very very wrong out there with the Coach and the other support staff.

7. Our bench strength is nowhere near compared to teams like Australia, Pakistan and England.

8. The way Australians played and went about beating Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. Remember that, that was one of the three objectives of the Aussie team for this season. They hadn't beaten India in India, Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka and won the Champions trophy.

9. Ricky Ponting as a captain has been far more succesful against Saurav Ganguly and seems to have a fair measure of him than Steve Waugh.

10. Under Ganguly we have just started winning Test's outside country not test Series (Outside the sub-continent) and under him we have just started to be aggressive and competitive. So it certainly was to difficult to contain the well planned and professional Australians. So there's a long way to go. We have to put these facts in perspective.

There were many more reasons, but I don't remember all of them now.