It is true that no team can win all the contests it takes part in, but the manner in which teams lose and the opponent's quality do count a lot. The Indian cricket team has been extremely successful in the ODI arena in the recent past but their dismal performance in West Indies cannot be termed as an aberration.
Firstly, losing 4 matches on the trot - the margin of victory for West Indies steadily rising from Match 2 to Match 5- is far from encouraging. Indians have the age-old knack of developing stars in the opponent's team. Mathew Hayden, Shoib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif - and most recently Dwayne Bravo. I do not take anything away from the "NewBigDog" Bravo, but the pathetic inability of Indian batsmen to pick up Bravo's slow balls shows Indians are not learning, let alone learning quickly.
In all the five matches, we did not have a solid start. If Dravid scores, Sehwag fails and vice-versa. Raina did not do well at Number 3. Kaif was a lot better when compared to his performances in the earlier series. But he must learn to score quickly after he has scored 50+ runs and faced 90+ balls. When any other top order batsman in the world would accelerate, Kaif slows down or gets out. Just recollect Sarwan's knock in the second ODI.Yuvraj was good but not good enough. Dhoni was subdued. Pathan played no role, either with bat or ball.
Catching was pathetic. Pathetic is a euphemism. This area has been India's weakness right throughout the season. Our bowling and especially our batting was exemplary in the previous series(s), which more than compensated for the lapse in catching. This time around, our batting also suffered - the persistent problem of poor catching remained and we had to lose the series meekly.
India's test form is not the greatest, hope they do well at least there. I wonder whether there is a correlation between the performance of Indian stock market and Indian cricket.
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