"Men in Blue" - Beaten Black & Blue

This is about the set of gifted, privileged and grossly overpaid Indian cricket team who are fast loosing their honour as well as reputation after the thrashing at South Africa.

This is not the first instance of the team comprehensively beaten. It has happened in Australia and SA before, but I have never come across such kind of repeated humiliation. I still vividly remember the Indian team touring SA for the first time (after their ban was lifted) under Azhar's captaincy in 1992. In the first test match, we got all out for 66 and 100 in the first and second innings respy. In the second and third test matches, we improved and showed some amount of resilience even though we lost the series 0-3. Following that, in the 7 ODI games, we won two and showed some character in the other 5 which we lost.

This is the first time I am seeing the team getting badly beaten; failing in all departments repeatedly. Usually, there will be one or two who will be out of form; but this time, the playing 11 always seem to be out of form.

After Ganguly's exit, when the team regrouped against ODI series Vs SL and won 6-1, emotions ran high. Dravid was praised, Chappel was hailed, Sachin was touted as 'returned to form' and all three seem to have teamed up and created the magic formula. But all that remained till England toured India. With an inexperienced side, Flintoff men drew the test series. India lost the match in one of their favourite venue - Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai when the great Sachin scored just 6 runs and got out to a nothing delivery.

The team, with highly over-rated non-performing seniors and in-experienced juniors have to get their basics right instead of advertisement contracts and look forward to 2011 world cup than building hopes

Chappel made sure Ganguly is not part of the team; but has he used the same yardstick for the so-called 'Master blaster'? With the current form of batsmen, Ganguly and Laxman certainly deserve a place and rightly recalled