With love from Prem

Picked this up, among the many things I have picked up from the legendary Prem P of rediff.com, on one of my numerous trips around the world wide web. Good stuff.

It is nice that in this team, even the junior players have been empowered to, and have the confidence to, speak for the team, to put their joys and hopes and dreams and heartbreaks on record.

Vide Mahendra Singh Dhoni's comments on the need for fans to stand up and be counted when the going is not so good.

I am frankly no fan of our developing culture, where even in victory, it has become a parlor game of sorts to find things to slam; to see the cup perenially as half empty, never half full.

One for instance: Comments, both in email and on the comments section of this blog, suggest it is a 'shame' that Harbhajan Singh top-scored in the first ODI, and that it was the bowlers who bailed the team out with the bat -- a point that has been used to excoriate the batsmen.

Granted this -- the batting, especially the shot selection, was pretty ordinary; collectively, the batting did not show the nous to change tack, to throttle back once it had sussed out that the Kotla was a 250, not 300-plus, pitch, and to alter the game plan accordingly.

That would be critical analysis, and it would be brilliant to see more of it in the feedback sections of the media; 'the batsmen suck, tell them all to go home' isn't.

Since when did cricket become a game where our batsmen all score centuries and our bowlers all take five wickets in an innings while the opposition bowlers give away runs and opposition batsmen gift wickets?

At least part of the reason for India's collapse had to be the wicket, which wasn't the best batting track we've seen, and the discipline and ability of England's bowling lineup, which especially early on when everything was going for them, bowled the absolutely right lines and put the batting under tremendous pressure -- so how does that mesh with 'the batsmen suck'?

It could be this flighty, instantly dismissive attitude that Dhoni is talking about -- but against that, Dhoni and his mates in the Indian side also need to be aware of how the fans see it.

All the statistics were against India chasing the required runs on the fifth day at the Wankhede; history was against it; the odds-makers didn't think much of the chances. And yet, if Dhoni had cared to look, and to listen, he would have found that even on that fifth day, with their team in what pundits said was a hopeless position, the fans blew away work, and turned up in their numbers.

They came because they believed in the team; they believed that it had the potential to create history, not be slave to it; they believed the team had the talent to do them proud; they believed that for their team, in home conditions with their backing, nothing was impossible.

And so they came, in their numbers, to see the impossible being made possible.

And they got what? About as uncaring a display of batting as you never want to see again -- led, ironically, by Dhoni himself. Remember that one shocking over? Where he aimed the sort of hit at an ordinary spinner that would have been discouraged even at schoolboy level, saw the fielder drop a sitter, and two deliveries later, hit the same spinner in the same stupid fashion to the same fielder?

Given that, what 'support' could the fans possibly have given the keeper-batsman, and his mates? It was not that India on that day was bowled out by brilliance; it was that they seemed to collectively shrug and go ah, the hell with it, not worth our while. It was, as the captain said, a collective abdication of reason.

And it was unfair on those fans who turned up in their numbers, and who cheered every leg bye, every no ball, every edge that went through for singles... fans who came hoping their team would fight -- not win, just fight -- and were disappointed with the callous capitulation.

So maybe Dhoni and his mates need to realize that Indian fans by and large are more patient, more forgiving, more tolerant than most. That they have stood by this team through long years, decades even, of ordinary performances, without giving up hope, without losing the faith. And they continue to stand by the team -- so maybe it is time for the team to repay that faith, that hope?

Maybe if Dhoni had, instead of finding fault with the fans, put out a statement saying he feels sorry, personally, for that act of total idiocy on the fifth day, the cheers for him would have been even louder the next time he walked out to bat?

In a word, mate -- fan support is not alms you get by begging for it; it is a gift you get for being who you are, and doing your thing with heart, and attitude.