I would concur with the author that Greg Chappell is not the first person we should be blaming for this debacle.
Sunny G has been quoted as saying "The Indian players never had the wherewithal to rise to the occasion since my playing days in 1970s". Of course, as 39 in 60 overs would suggest, that's absolutely true. How then do we expect that not having a foreign coach would benefit this team in any way? How can we expect that the desi coach would not resort to favoritism and lead the team backwards instead of forward?
The blame, lies with the selection committee. On what basis what Sehwag persisted with? What are the instructions for Tendulkar as a team member? Dravid included Sehwag based on liking, not on form or fitness. Is the board going to inquire the true reasons for the appalling fitness levels in the team, despite there being all sorts of experts to help? Does this point to the sudden disappearance of the training skills of these trainers or the inability and unwillingness of our players to adopt the regimen pointed out?
What good was Ganguly to the team, for all his experience and 'sterling comeback'? Can't we expect him to win one match out of three on his own, when it mattered so much? Same goes for Tendulkar and for Dravid. One more person to be included in this list is Yuvraj Singh. He has been around the team long enough to be counted a senior, and he has consistently failed to deliver at the crucial junctures. We do not expect him to be a Hussey (who's a later entrant to the game) or Bevan or Ponting, but he can be a Bravo or Shoaib Malik or AB deVilliers? These guys are nowhere near as talented as Yuvraj, but they give their last ounce of sweat and blood on the field. Is 100% too much to ask from these enormously highly paid, endorsed and worshipped players?
If Laxman was sacked because he was a liability in the field, how is it any different for Kumble and Ganguly? Wasn't Laxman equally gifted, if not more? And I am not advocating his re-inclusion here. If players are to fail at times when required, why not persist with Kaif, Raina and Dinesh Karthik? I have lost count of the innumerable times that Tendulkar has a) harmed the team's cause by playing so defensively as to make Paul Harris look like Bedi or Vettori and b) failing to produce an innings in a match that matters. Seriously, I cannot even get myself to comment on him anymore.
The way out of this is to retain Dravid, for anyways he is the only one who matters to our Test team, include Raina, Kaif and Karthik (whose much more solid, technically sound and reliable than Dhoni, 183 notwithstanding) to our ODI team, bring in Romesh Powar, who'll bowl to get wickets, not to escape hammering, and RP Singh (Agarkar, on average, bowls more bad balls an over than RP does). Gambhir is as frivolous as Sehwag, but there is a chance he might remember the hurt it might have caused to have been dropped from the WC squad just a month before departure, and learn something from it.
Four years is the right time to hope that our bench strength improves and these youngsters rise to expectations, but we cannot spend four years investing our time and money in players past their prime, resting on laurels, liabilities on the field, hoping that they do not again let us down the way they've done time after time so far.
