Is India going the England way???

[Konfucious / Karthik]

I have a habit of drawing parallels between cricket and football. They do tend to go in similar directions.For starters, both games were originally started by England but they have made no significant contribution to the sport after that.

Secondly, both boast of money spinning crowd pulling leagues other than the competitions that take place at an international level. Well the EPL/BPL (English/Barclays Premier League) is effectively the richest league in the footballing world with insane amounts of money being spent during transfers . They also are home to an array of foreign players. Teams like Arsenal have only one home grown player in the starting eleven. Even thats true in case of the IPL which is obviously the richest cricket league and also the BCCI which is the richest cricketing body in the world and have the best players from around the globe.

I think you are getting my drift by now. India and England are two countries with a great history but somewhere they are going downhill because of their own doing. England failed to qualify for the Euro 2008 despite having the talents of Rooney,Gerrard,Lampard, etc at their disposal and now defending champions India have been ousted from the T20 World cup and many people still haven't forgotten the 2007 world cup.

I fear for the future of India cricket for it may go the England way, this may be too pessimistic a view but still possible. We were a victim of complacency and bad tactics. One of the reasons could be the lack of motivation to perform at an international level as you've already made good money from your club and endorsement deals and it could also be fatigue do to the amount of cricket being played. Sehwag's injury was a key factor for India's performance and it was an injury that happened during his IPL details. Football players face such injuries numerous times rendering them useless when their country needs their services.

England had to face a lot of backlash and had to do some serious damage control to get their world cup bid on track. It is obvious that India will face tremendous criticism here but they will have to take it in the right vein and hopefully Dhoni & Co will get better.

The team needs introspection and need to look forward to the upcoming assignments and only success will ensure that we don't end up like England.