Will India have to take an early flight home from the West Indies???

Millions of die hard Indian cricket fans were shocked into silence when Bangladesh unexpectedly pulled of a so called “upset” win in the world cup. A lot has been written about the poor performance of the Indian team and the shock defeat and the hand of the “minnow’s” . But was it as shocking and unexpected as everyone believes? Frankly I always had the feeling that this was going to be a big test for India. Bangladesh is a test playing nation and probably the strongest among the 8 lesser sides in the tournament. Everyone seems to have forgotten the fact that Bangladesh won both their warm up matches convincingly. One of the wins was against New Zealand which was a team which beat Australia three times in a row. This should have set the warning bells ringing in the Indian camp. They should have prepared better for this game and realized that Bangladesh was probably playing as well as any other team at this point of time and that they had a good chance to surprise them. And in the end that was exactly what happened. Bangladesh played some brilliant cricket and they deserved to win. It is never easy to restrict the likes of Sachin and Saurav and the Bangladeshis did it wonderfully well.
What was strange was the fact that all the pretournament coverage, articles and analysis were all working on the assumption that the 8 regular teams will make it to the Super 8 stage. This kind of complete disregard for the 8 other teams was quite surprising to me. I always felt that something will go wrong, and that’s what has happened. Pakistan are already out of the World Cup and India have lost the first match which they were expected to win easily. So where does this leave India? Does the great Indian Dream of winning the world cup have to be put on the back burner for another 4 years? Well, that seems to be the case. But in the past also we have ended up being in such situations but have managed to sneak in through the back door. There is still a slender thread of hope for India. A lot of it depends on what the other teams do. But there are a couple of things India has to do perfectly to enhance their chances.
1. Beat the daylights out of Bermuda. We have to win and win big. It has to be bigger than the Sri Lankan victory. Why? Because it will ensure we get ahead of Sri Lanka on the Net Run Rate.
2. Beat Sri Lanka by a decent margin. Of course we can hope that Bangladesh beat Sri Lanka( which I think they can). In that case a simple victory over Sri Lanka will suffice for India.


If this does not happen? Well, then India can say good bye to the West Indies and take the next flight back home. The team will be torn to shreds by the millions of fans, critics and the press. The interest in the world cup will go down and it will probably result in large losses for the Indian Industry which I believe has put in tons of advertising money into this world cup expecting a good showing from the Indians. But having said all this, when the next series starts the Indian fan will again be there supporting the team. That die hard dedication never seems to go away. Lets hope that the teams rises to the occasion and pulls itself up with the help of the slender thread of hope that is remaining. Lets wait and see….