One week ago, James Anderson’s delivery crashed into
Mohammed Shami’s stumps and India had lost the last test match and, with it, the series against England. As was to be expected, analyses followed in an attempt to make sense of our loss. Mike Brearley, who is now justly acknowledged as a leading thinker on the game, wondered whether
Virat Kohli had become too dominant a figure in Indian cricket. The corollary was clear – was this affecting India’s ability to function as a team? An excessively strong personality as a captain could suppress a counter view in the team.
This refusal to entertain any other point of view came across in the reactions of the captain and the coach, Ravi Shastri, of the Indian cricket team. Both of them insisted it was not as devastating a defeat as the final scores would suggest. One cannot help but think that it is that very attitude that was the root cause of our defeat. It really looked as if captain and coach were in denial. It is interesting to see how we arrived at this stage.
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