Dear India, please stop lashing out at your cricket team

For all practical purposes, the Indian Cricket Team’s responsibilities aren’t restricted to solely playing the game, but to win every time they do so. The fact that there are 1.2 billion passionate followers – because apparently, the only sport worth following in India is cricket – it makes life much harder for Virat Kohli and his boys to perform without the slightest worries.The easy accessibility to social media allows all and sundry to pass scathing remarks about a

The easy accessibility to social media allows all and sundry to pass scathing remarks about a blotched performance. There’s no end to criticism towards the Indian Cricket Team whenever the results aren’t as desired by the fans back home.

The final of the recently concluded ICC Champions Trophy was no different. India were handed a drubbing by arch-rivals Pakistan in what was expected to be a cakewalk for the defending champions.

An otherwise reliable and remunerative top-three failed to make a sizable contribution, thus quashing all hopes of an Indian victory. Virat Kohli, in particular, attracted considerable brickbats for having departed without having got to double figures. King Kohli, who had made it a habit to boss chases, was disdainfully removed from the equation on the biggest stage of his career.

Furthermore, Kohli’s captaincy came under the scanner – how could a bowling attack as potent as India’s leak 338 runs? Had Kohli missed a trick by benching Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Shami, two of India’s fastest bowlers in their cricketing history? In retrospect, it was Pakistan’s top two pacers who had done the bulk of the damage in the second innings, which raises questions about Kohli’s decision to play Ashwin over Umesh in particular.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s contribution was extremely valuable – to maintain a sub-5 economy when the rest of the bowlers are being taken to the cleaners is commendable – but the fact still remains that India were well below par as far as their bowling is concerned.

This is the critical Indian in me speaking, who loves to find faults in his favorite cricket team the moment it fails to live up to his expectations. My objective, cricket-loving half though tells me it is not fair to come hard at the Indian team. Not fair at all.

The ugly truth is that sport isn’t always about winning. Of course, the intent is to win, but circumstances are such that winning consistently isn’t always possible. No athlete smoothly soared towards success and remained at the top of his game for the rest of his career.

Michael Jordan has perhaps missed more shots than he’s put in, Roger Federer has crashed out of Grand Slam events before getting to the quarter-finals, and Sachin Tendulkar has walked back without troubling the scorers. Defeats, dry patches and lack of form is part and parcel of any sport.

Coming to India’s criticism, it’s not like they played a poor grade of cricket all through the tournament. It’s not as though they made a premature exit from the Champions Trophy, something which the Indian public just couldn’t accept in the 2007 world cup. India reached the final, which is no paltry achievement.

They thrashed Pakistan in their opening game, defeated the best team in the world with ease and they breezed past Bangladesh in the semis. The loss against Sri Lanka was the only hiccup India had en route the final of the tournament, but other than that, it was three one-sided victories for the Men in Blue. But the focus is never on these clinical performances when a final is lost.

So Ashwin bowled defensively and gave away runs, so Bumrah bowled a no-ball which allowed Fakhar Zaman to stay at the crease, so India’s top three didn’t score runs on the biggest stage. India’s one failure cannot logically turn them into a bad team overnight, simply because they couldn’t show up in the final. It makes little sense to berate a team on the basis of a single game

Seldom do you see the New Zealand media or the Sri Lankan media lashing out at their team for a poor show. We would urge Indians to do the same. Support your team by all means, but do so with a tinge of dispassion when the need arises. Don’t take to the streets to smash television sets, pelt stones at cricketers’ houses and tear into a bunch of boys who failed to win a game of cricket. Instead, embrace the defeats, back your team, and rejoice their successes.