Verve and Nerve needed in equal measure to win consistently

I have, in my previous blogs, written about the dangers of raising the Indian team to the skies after their commendable T20 world championship win. My point is simple: celebrate the achievement, for it is to be cherished. But do not assume that one swallow will herald summer. So do not delude youself that this one victory guarantees a string of future wins. Playing Australia anywhere, anytime is not easy. At home in India, the cricket team- and especially the new captain M S Dhoni- have to bear the added burden of the Indian fans’ expectations- raised all the higher by the team’s sterling performance in the T20 tournament in South Africa.

Not surprisingly, two back-to-back losses to the Australians at home have upset Indian cricket fans and today, even the chairman of the selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar, got into the act, using the media to convey poorly veiled threats to the “senior” players in the team- shape up and perform or ship out. To my mind, such admonition should have been in the confines of the dresing room or at the team strategy meeting before the next game, and not in the media. But hey, that’s just my thinking.

I think the real problem is caused by a combination of lack of talent, inaequate physical fitness and endurance and perhaps most importantly, gaps in the players’ mental toughness. Don’t get me wrong- some of our players are very talented. But sadly, they lack the fitness and endurance neded to deliver peak performance throughout the 100 overs of an ODI (or 5 days of a test match). Since T20 is a shorter duration game, the lack of fitness is not as apparent (or harmful) as in the longer versions of the game. But the best talent can come to nought if the players don’t believe at all times that they can win. The opposition batsmen may be scoring at will- but don’t give up and ease the pressure. Your batsmen may be tied up in knots by the opposition bowlers and you may have just scored 2 runs in the last 2 overs with an asking rate of 6 runs per over. But there is no need to panic. A couple of good hits to the boundary and your team is back in the game. More importantly, you have sent a signal to the opposition- we are not going to roll over. We are here for a good fight and by God, we will give it to you! Keeping one’s head is critical especially when people around you are losing theirs (to borrow from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”-which, by the way, is one of my favourite poems). If you have not read this poem before this, check it out at http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm

The bottom line- To win constently, you cannot rely only on verve (talent). To win, the team also needs nerve.