Couldn't connect, we lost our players during Indian Premier League: Coach

The Indian team arrived in London two weeks ago, punch drunk on success and the confidence that comes with it. Riding on 39 days of manic Indian Premier League action, they were the men in form, the side that had figured this format out. So what went wrong for Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team? Bad form? Bad planning? Bad luck?

Coach Gary Kirsten had one answer today: the IPL.

He was quite clear that the scheduling of the IPL, squeezed in between the New Zealand tour and the world Twenty20 championships, had a lot to do with the team’s disappointing showing. “We came into a tournament without being able to connect with the players at all. We got two days with the players,” Kirsten said this evening.

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How times have changed

“The BCCI members had resolved in a working committee meeting recently that they were not happy with the Twenty20 version and will not play it.” This was Board of Control for Cricket in India president Sharad Pawar’s stance three years ago, when the Indian team’s participation in the inaugural edition of the World Twenty20 championship itself was in doubt.

Back then, the bigwigs in the board considered the format a bit of a joke. England might have needed T20 to “bring crowds back to the grounds” but India did not, was the general theme (and anyway, they whispered, the fast-paced nature of the game, with just a 10-minute break, didn’t lend itself to advertising revenue).

As Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team prepare to start their title defence, it’s hard not to chuckle at how, and how much, the board’s posturing on the game’s shortest format has changed.

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