The ides of March...

... or to be more precise 23rd March. It is the day that haunts Indian cricket during its recent world cup campaigns. It was pointed out to me by a friend that it was March 23rd 2003 when Australia dashed the Indian hopes of winning a world cup when it had come so close and put its stamp as a class apart side (God, I friggin hate Aussies). And 4 years later to the date, it is 23rd March 2007 when Sri Lanka dashed a billion hopes. Once again we are left with a bad taste in the mouth. A lot of hype, too much anticipation and a complete letdown. With India and Pakistan running the cricket show and raking in the viewers, I wonder if it is powerful enough to bully the ICC from not scheduling any games for itself on this day of the year.

On another note, in the post game interview, Dravid talked about the format being that having one bad day caused us the tournament when India lost to Bangladesh and the same held true for Pakistan. I believe that this world cup format has been the most fair of them all. Two strong test teams grouped together with minnows to get themselves warmed to the tournament and by the time the tournament reaches the semifinals, the teams would have played all the strong teams and qualified themselves as the best four teams. From then on, it is about rising to the occasion against a formidable opponent. While India's group was termed as group of death because of having another test playing team as one of the minnows, it was the attitude of the players in the group matches that lost it for us. There was no confidence. The rout of West Indies in the warm up matches should have given the team an arrogance to tackle Bangladesh. Instead they prodded around and if you cannot get 200 on two occasions against a decent bowling performance while posting the highest world cup total against another, it just shows that all this team is fit for is a bilateral series of 7 games hoping for 4 good days and expecting 3 lousy days to take a series.

This is World cup cricket. It comes once in 4 years. You cannot expect an off day during this fortnight. Not the whole team. This is a whole team playing and everyone decides to perform only on one day out of three. What about the rest of the days? Or is it the attitude, "I did it yesterday, someone else can do it today?" Well they can all sit at home and let the other teams do it the rest of the days of the tournament.