NEW DELHI, March 31: Even before the post-mortem reports of India's disastrous campaign in the Caribbean are handed over to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on April 6, its senior officials already seem to be aware of its possible content and the events that transpired in the run-up to the debacle.
"Coach Greg Chappell and manager Sanjay Jagdale's reports will be submitted to the board on April 6. After going through them, we will take a decision on the future course of action. But we are also aware of certain incidents that took place off-the-field among the players," said a top BCCI official. It is now getting apparent that groupism in the team was rampant during India's World Cup campaign.
"There are five players in the team whose attitude needs to be sorted out," the official stressed. When asked to name the players, he suggested names like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Ajit Agarkar.
He further added the need to rope in more youngsters under skipper Rahul Dravid. "There is nothing wrong with the team as such, but we are convinced that it is the attitude of the players that affected the performance. When we meet on April 6, we will go into all the factors in a detailed manner that contributed to our poor show," the official promised.
He also suspected groupism had a huge impact on the field. "They didn't gel well and also didn't play as a team. There were a few who even played for themselves and didn't have much respect for some of the other members of the squad."
When TOI got in touch with one of the players in the team, he said: "All I can say is that we are very disappointed with what happened. A couple of us even cried in the dressing room. It was our dream to do well there but one bad match against Bangladesh made all the difference. There were a number of reasons that contributed to our losses against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka."
