Team India is at the crossroads again. Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his boys crossed it the last time, bouncing back after losing their first game in the Super Eights to win the Twenty20 World Cup. Now, it remains to be seen whether they can repeat the feat.
On Friday, at the ICC World Twenty20, they came up short by a mile, outclassed by the West Indies in every department of the game, including fielding, in the first encounter between the two sides at Lord's in nearly 26 years.
After two easy outings, against minnows Bangladesh and Ireland in the group stages, India's first real challenge in defence of their crown came up against a formidable opponent, and, needless to say, they were found wanting.
Dwayne Bravo came to the party with a cracking innings of 66 from 36 deliveries to single-handedly take the Windies to a well-deserved seven-wicket victory. Not surprising, even India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was effusive in praise of his batting.
"Bravo played a brilliant innings to take the team through, because we were able to apply some pressure on them, but in the middle overs he batted really well and scored some runs off the spinners," Dhoni said after Friday's match.
He, however, was quick to rue the fact that the team did not put up enough runs, being restricted to 153 for seven in their 20 overs.
"It was not enough. We have seen in this format, especially on these tracks, if you are looking to put some score on the board it should be at least 165-odd runs, because the wickets are nice. But we really fancied our chances even with 153 on the board," he said.
He is now looking to draw inspiration from the last tournament, played in South Africa two years ago, where they were in a similar situation but went on to win every game thereafter en route to the title.
"We will be under pressure to perform in the next game, but that has been the story in the last World Cup too, because after the first game every game was a do-or-die situation for us. We beat some of the toughest teams and we went to the finals and won the Cup. It is not like that we cannot do it again," Dhoni said.
Dhoni also pointed out that the 51 dot balls India had in their innings was a major drawback.
"Our conscious effort -- when we sit to analyze -- we try to minimize dot balls. If we could have reduced 51 dot balls to, maybe, 35 dot balls, then we would have had another 10 or 15 runs, but this was one of those off-days where nothing worked.
"We place a lot of importance on boundaries and sixes, but you must remember that lesser the dots balls, the bigger chance of posting a big score."
Asked why he did not come in at number three like in the previous matches, he replied: "Gautam [Gambhir] was doing the job so we thought we needed one of the guys to be in the middle. When Gautam is there he just plays his game, and if he gets out, I can look to get in.
"But the normal strategy was to get in after the fourth or the sixth overs. Fortunately, in the last few games we never really lost wickets before that, so that was the plan."
