26 October,2024 07:15 AM IST | Mumbai | Sunil Gavaskar
India skipper Rohit Sharma and head coach Gautam Gambhir after the loss to NZ in Pune on Saturday. Pic/PTI
India suddenly lost a couple of wickets from being in a good position and have lost a series at home after so many years. They might have lost the odd Test match, but not lost a series at home since 2012-13 to England. India's batting has always been very rightly lauded and admired and it is the batting which has let the team down in this series. More about this a little later.
Right now though it is time to talk about the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow which has reduced the number of sporting disciplines and most of which have been the ones in which India have won medals in the past.
The Commonwealth Games over the many past editions have been difficult to manage because of the increasing expense in holding the event, and so it may well be that in the future that the Commonwealth Games will be discontinued. Often a lot of the countries who win medals at the Olympic Games or World Championships do not send their top athletes to the Commonwealth Games, keeping them fresh for those marquee games. So the importance that was earlier given to the Commonwealth Games is now diminishing. From the Indian point of view it is a big disappointment that the events where India was pretty much assured of medals will not be held. No wonder there has been huge outcry amongst the Indian sporting fraternity against the decision of the Commonwealth Games Federation to reduce the number of events for the edition in Glasgow.
Also Read: IND vs NZ 2nd Test: Critical mix-up between Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant leaves India reeling; WATCH
The Commonwealth Games were originally given to the state of Victoria in Australia and they decided that since the expenses of organising and arranging the event was going to be way too high, they withdrew and gave it to Glasgow who agreed to hold the event with a substantially pruned number of disciplines. Whether it was the Commonwealth Games Federation or the organisers of the Glasgow edition who decided on the reduction of disciplines is not known, but it definitely has created a stir amongst many of the countries that take part in it.
Ideally, of course the sports that are played in the majority of Commonwealth countries should be held and not sports that are played in a handful of those countries. I am not sure how many countries in the Commonwealth have artistic gymnastics as a sport in their country or even if they do, if they have any reasonable standard of performance in the sport. This is just one example and there could be some more of such disciplines which are hardly ever played in the majority of Commonwealth countries. The sporting fraternity in India particularly from the disciplines that have been dropped for the Glasgow event are up in arms and want India not to even send any teams to Glasgow. That will be very hard for the Indian authorities to take the call and may not even happen. That said, they need to make some sort of a protest through the Commonwealth Games Federation about the disciplines that have been discontinued from the Commonwealth Games.
India's defeat in the series was because the Indian batting was unable to cope with the bounce and seam movement in the first innings in Bengaluru and spin in the second Test match in Pune on a pitch which helped the spinners to get a bit of grip. Both the dismissals of 46 in Bengaluru and 156 in Pune were disappointing because these pitches were not impossible to play on and because in a Test match your technical and temperamental abilities are going to be tested to the fullest.
India did score a very entertaining 400-plus in the second innings at Bengaluru but were still not able to stave off the defeat. There will be plenty spoken about whether the Indian players should be allowed to play the Ranji Trophy and domestic first-class cricket so that they get practice on pitches where the ball turns, but as we have seen earlier on, the international schedules are such that it is pretty difficult for them to be available for domestic matches.
Speaking of domestic matches, defending Ranji Trophy champions Mumbai have dropped Prithvi Shaw from their team that is currently in Tripura. There have been mixed reports about his omission from the Ranji team. If it's about his attitude, approach and discipline, then it's understandable, but hopefully it is nothing to do with his weight as one report seems to have suggested. That report suggested that he had 35 per cent more body fat. We have seen in the previous Test in Bengaluru how another player Sarfaraz Khan, whose weight and shape have also been discussed in the public domain, played a scintillating innings of 150, showing that it is not the shape or the size of your waist that determines cricket fitness. It's whether you can score 150-plus runs and that too bat for a whole day or bowl 20-plus overs in a day. That should be the only criteria of a player's fitness. By the way, how many players with zero per cent or minimal body fat have scored 379 like Prithvi Shaw? I rest my case about fitness.
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