Canberra game defeat hurts the Indian fans the most. India were just a whiff away from a miraculous victory with one of the best ever batting performances from Kohli on Australian soil. The way Virat toyed with Faulkner after the latter had indulged in a verbal duel, can become a stuff of legend. It was as if a master was telling a rank rookie to just keep within limits. No doubt, Shikhar Dhawan, who too played wonderfully well after the initial burst from Rohit Sharma, they had brought the asking rate down to less than a run a ball. Batsmen like Ravinder Jadeja too could have powered the game to a victory, since he too has six plus years of international experience. In fact, he was slogging at almost every ball he faced in the penultimate over of the match. When the Captain fails, especially when the victory is near, the other batsmen must be able to shoulder little bit of responsibility for finishing the match. All we needed from Captain was a 20 plus run as a moral support to Virat to lead the team towards victory. We need tough batsmen, who can face any kind of situations and play till the last ball their natural game. The finisher’s tag was missing totally as we were tamed at the end by 25 runs. It is a game whether you lose the blame goes to the Captain. Well, in this case, the whole responsibility of failure is already taken by the Captain cool on him. That shows his greatness. But the pity is that we were out of the recknoning after the Melbourne game and the Captain was the culprit for the loss.
Nickhil Mani
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
