India's World Cup Loss
The wounds of the 2023 World Cup Final are still fresh in the minds of the Indians who follow the game of cricket (read: everyone).
A lot of postmortems are being done, and rightfully so.
People do not want to discuss the loss as they cannot control sharing their frustrations.
Indian Cricket Team won all the games they played in the World Cup until the final. This is a feat they had not achieved in the previous World Cups. Almost everyone and their family member wanted India to lose at least one match before the knockout matches. Nobody, and I would argue even the Indian cricket team, trusted them to win the World Cup without losing a single game.
As a cricket team and a nation, weâve become confident about our abilities but lack unfathomable belief. I donât think itâs fair to blame India for it. They see their cricket board doing everything possible to engineer a World Cup win. Does the board not believe their team would win the cup without their support?
Maybe we are still a relic of the past, and although we see our potential, we are afraid we may fail. What else would explain why we were playing the final like a 90s ODI game where we go into building the innings phase instead of attacking from one end?
In the conference after the loss, Rahul Dravid said, âEvery time we wanted to accelerate, we lost a wicketâ. We feared the failure of playing 50 overs instead of believing we could score a competitive target. The team stuck to their roles through the World Cup and even validated that they were playing to the plan in the middle of the innings. The plan failed on the final, and when we needed an eccentric performance, we got a subpar performance.
The pitch and the conditions play a role, but if our mindset is riddled with fear, then even a house reptile looks like an endangered species.
Maybe the next generation will back themselves to win, and even if they donât, they will go down fighting. Indian Cricket team played fantastic cricket for ten games and had a bad day in their 11th game. To their bad luck, the 11th game was the most crucial game they played.