So somehow Indian team made it possible to come out of WC 2007 even being in a group which had Bermuda and Bangladesh type teams. The Indian team lost to Bangladesh and made them feel like they have really built a world class team. Bangladesh cricket team is feeling full of confidence. Anyway this feeling will soon go away when matches of super 8 will start.
As soon as India was out of WC, print and electronic media started doing "detailed" analysis. These news channels are now behind everyone related with Indian cricket team. They are the guys who first made the players feel like crowned king by reporting every single movements and activities done by any player. I remember once in prime time news hour, one of the news channels happily reported that there are some gossips going around for Dhoni's marriage. They reached Dhoni's house with camera and microphone to interview his parents to get every small details about Dhoni's marriage. Now Dhoni is villain for all of the news channels. Similarly for Greg. When he took over coaching job, they called him Guru Greg and started reporting each steps taken by Greg as something innovative. Now the poor chap is target of almost everyone including Kapil Dev who once coached India to australia tour (in 1999) and secured 3-0 white wash for India team in tests and 4-1 humiliating defeat in One Dayers. Yesterday I read a column http://in.rediff.com/wc2007/2007/mar/26guest.htm on rediff.com and somewhat I do agree with the author. People like Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar never did anything right for Indian cricket after retirement. They just kept on cribbing on everything from management to players to performances. I do remember Kapil's "splendid" performances for almost 6 years during 1988-1993. I do agree everyone in Indian team performed really very bad in WC and this is a fact. No one can escape. Not even Saurav, because everyone knows that he was the person who was in form. He scored few runs in group matches but this is also true that he slowed down the pace of scoring rate and set the rythm for team to score with an average of 4 runs per over. We can say same things for Zaheer, Munaf. They performed reasonably well but their performances were never threatning to opposition. In cricket even a single bowler can change the direction of match. For team like Bangladesh, score of 192 was defendable, if fast bowlers had taken 4-5 wickets in first 20 overs or so. Thus not only batsmen but bowlers too failed. So what should we do to show our anger to Indian Cricket Team. Should we pelt stones on them? Should we raise some slogans on streets? No. Not at all. We should not boycott them but we should boycott the products they endorse. Like if someone from Indian cricket team endorses one soft drink, we should start using another brand. Anyway there is not much difference in taste of different soft drinks. Similarly for all other products. Let’s boycott all the products endorsed by any one of Indian cricket team. Let’s boycott all the fashion shows (even on TVs) where they walk on ramp. Let’s boycott all the movies where they go for muhurat and all. I thought that will be the best way to express our anger. I was shocked to hear on a TV news channel that representatives of these companies influence the selectors to select the player who endorses their products. So we need to boycott the products than the players. Don’t boycott Indian cricket. Don’t boycott Indian cricket team. Boycott the products they endorse.......
