Best Players, Bad Team

Sub: Best players, Bad Team.


The latest Times Cricket Rating makes interesting reading. Six Indian are appearing in the top 25 cricket players of the world, which is 24% of the total. Inspite of that we do not find a place in the top 5 teams of the world. It is pertinent to note that though not a single Sri Lankan player is appearing in the list of 25 best players, Sri Lanka is rated as the 5th best team in the world. In the aggregate points tally India is far ahead of Australia which is rated as the second best team in the world.

The figures throw light to some stark realities. The fundamental difference between India and other sports powers is that while they create formidable team with average players, we make mediocre team with talented players. This is not the case with cricket or other sports but in almost all our team activities. No wonder, whatever little progress India has made in sports after independence are all due to individual efforts whether it is Ramanathan Krishnan, Prakash Padukone, Milkha Singh, Vijay Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Michel Ferreira, Geet Sethi, P.T.Usha, Viswanathan Anand, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhoopati etc. In almost all the team games whether it is football, hockey or volleyball our standard has steadily declined. Even in cricket, inspite of having world class players, paying fabulous fees and perks to players and plethora of publicity, our world rating is none too impressive .

It is high time to make a serious introspection about this deep routed malady. Lack of team spirit makes havoc with everything. This is the basic and foremost reason for our tardy progress in various fields. For decades, our students of commerce and Economics are chanting the slogan “ India is a rich country inhabited with poor people.” Perhaps no other country in the world is having that much rich and diverse resources as available in India. We have become more and more selfish, unpatriotic and started adopting a crab mentality. There is a popular joke that one scientist collected crabs from various countries to make some experiments. While the jar containing crabs from other countries were covered, jar containing Indian crabs was kept open. To a question whether Indian the crabs will not escape, it was told that before any crab reaches the top of the jar others will pull it down. This crab mentality is the biggest stumbling block in our way of progress.

Let us pray the almighty to give us good sense to bring peace and prosperity both materially and morally to this great country.