http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...-leadership-role/story-fn67wv6z-1226282025473
Indian team a "rabble with no redeeming features"
Malcolm Conn
The Daily Telegraph
February 27, 2012 12:00AM
CAN India find anything else to whinge about?
Thank goodness Tuesday night's game against Sri Lanka in Hobart will be India's last on this tour - barring some major mathematical quirk of results which will see them make the finals.
India cannot go home soon enough to their bulging bank accounts and flat, grassless wickets.
Sachin Tendulkar's run out for 14 at the SCG last night typified India's tour. Pathetic.
To remonstrate that he had been blocked by Brett Lee when they barely touched was just woeful. Tendulkar was not forced to alter course and he gave up attempting to make his ground.
He may once have been the greatest modern cricketer in the world and India the new arrogant financial force in the game, but on and off the field this rabble will go home with no redeeming features.
It was yet another example of India treating the greater game with scant respect.
It is impossible to believe that India was the number one Test team in the world for nigh on 20 months and won the World Cup in April.
Instead, Australia has been presented with the same under-prepared shambles who lost top place on the Test table with a 4-0 flogging in England mid-year.
This over-paid, over-indulged, over-aged bunch of prima-donnas should be ashamed of themselves.
But when you're paid millions to frolic about in the IPL and millions more by leading Indian companies in a rapidly-expanding economy, what does it really matter?
Cricket would be a curiosity rather than a serious world sport if it was not for the money and passion of a vast Indian population.
With a billion people, an exploding middle class of 300 million and no significant competition from other sports on the global stage what does India lack, apart from decent administration and a worldly team?
Does India really care about the greater good of the game?
From the experience of this tour the answer is a resounding no.
Start with captain MS Dhoni. In remarkable displays of incompetence, or lack of caring, he has been suspended for slow overrates during the Test and one-day series.
Of all the records ever set in cricket how many skippers will manage to get themselves suspended twice on the same tour in different forms of the game?
India treated its passionate and vocal supporters with contempt (locking them out of training sessions), remains in the Stone Age as the only country which refuses to embrace technology for umpiring decisions and makes no attempt to promote the game.
Tendulkar, the most loved and admired player in the game, has made no effort to address his many fans at any stage during more two months on tour.
The only time he managed to utter anything to anyone besides his team mates and staff came before yesterday's match.
He made a short thank-you speech after being awarded honorary membership of the Sydney Cricket Ground, where he has a Test average of 157.
Is India ever going to embrace the global cricket community, or remain just a whinging, home ground bully?
