By Dipankar Roy Choudhury

 If there will ever be an award for losing matches, there will be no other contender than India. India will win in its ability of losing matches hands down!!!

  Indian Cricket team had been known for losing games, games that has progressed to a stage that India cannot lose in any way…, India has manage to lose those games convincingly! Incredible isn’t it? Well not only the Indian Team, the Indian Authorities, the Stadium Authorities are also not far behind. Even they will help when India is looking for some help in losing matches.

  I am referring to the ODI Cricket Match #4 of the current series being played at Mohali in India…… India are already 2 – 1 up in the series and are poised to win this match to go up 3 – 1 in the series. Everything looks all good, Australia has batted first and has not a set a very large total for India and India is now really well poised to win. Good so far….but wait, the Stadium Authority also wants to steps in! They are trying hard to find some way that India does not win that match. They dig out their records and find that Sachin Tendulkar is short of 20 runs to get his 17,000 runs in ODI. Lo and Behold!! they start putting their act together. The score board starts flashing with Sachin’s achievements, 20 more runs to get, then 18.25 runs to get, then 11.98 runs to get, then 9.85 runs to get to complete God’s (Sachins’s) 17,000 runs!! The authorities forget which the main score is! India’s winning or Sachin’s landmark. The Scoreboard Official forgets that India’s winning is more important and Sachin’s landmark, if achieved, can be a good by-product! The Authorities also forget that by chanting Sachin-Sachin all the time, other youngster in the team feel neglected and don’t feel valuable for the team and their morale goes down….so as expected India loses the match, Sachin falls short of his 17,000 runs, Australia comes square with India in the series 2-2 matches……and we all can estimate where the whole series will go from here. And that’s where it goes.

  Here I might also like to add that in one of the earlier matches in this series itself while India was batting, on one occasion suddenly the whole Aussie Teams had gone crazy with a caught behind appeal, Gautam Gambhir, the batsman in question was un-perturbed, both the umpires were totally unmoved, the “snicko” comes back with negative “snick” in every replay…… the Aussie Commentators including the likes of such senior commentator as Allan Border comes out with a response….. “Snicko always cannot be relied upon”. Well, our Authorities, are they listening?

 When will we ever learn? How long will we go on like this??

 Also with due respect to Sachin Tendulkar, how long will be go on flogging a dead horse at the expense of letting down some great youngsters, who have been performing exceptionally well but are not getting their deserving recognition… Do we realize what we are doing? Frankly speaking I have not seen the Passion and Fire in the eyes of the Little Master in the entire series; I have not seen him passing on his experience and expertise to the team and its members, especially to the youngsters and for the benefit of the team. I have not seen him contributing for the benefit of the team. I wonder why he continues to be in the team and why we continue to master our skills in losing??

 How long will be go on mastering our skills in losing, how long??