not a defense of the ‘Men in Blue’ who seem to have caught the blues in the last two matches. India lost to West Indies and England. Anyone with a reasonable memory can recollect that it is only recently that we drubbed these teams in bilateral T20 contests, in fact England was handed a 5-0 hiding late last year. So, what changed between now and then?

It is an interesting and intriguing question. It looks like some of India’s old problems are coming back to haunt the team, maladies that we thought had been eradicated from Indian cricket. Over the past couple of years, we have had no reason to quibble about our bowlers, they have done exceedingly well in all conditions and situations. Even at the World Cup, they came up with some performances that gave not much room for complaint. Yes, Zaheer was not 100%, but he was still good and did not leak much runs. Irfan Pathan tried hard with a degree of success. Only the young Ishanth Sharma was guilty of pitching it a bit short too often. But, even that cannot be considered the main reason for India’s exit. Spin has been as good as ever with Harbhajan using all his experience. Making the Windies work hard to chase 153 in the first game and then restricting England to the same total in the second tell us that the bowling is not to blame.

If not the bowling, it has to be the batting. It certainly was. Some may lament the loss of Sehwag. Yes, that did leave a hole at the top that had to be filled by Rohith Sharma which meant that India missed the services of a good finisher in the middle order. One cannot ask an opening batsman to be a good finisher too. Even stranger was the inability of Dhoni to produce the big shots. He seems to have misplaced his bit hitting prowess somewhere. Once known for his huge sixes, he is now struggling to find the boundaries, only being able to nudge around the singles and the twos. It is not long before familiar questions about captaincy affecting his batting are going to come to the fore. Yousuf Pathan always had too much to do and Yuvraj Singh almost always pulled it off, but you can’t expect him to smack Stuart Broad for six sixes every time. But the real cause for worry is that India’s weakness against quality fast bowling has been reopened, the old wound is back to hurt the Indians. It seemed to have healed, but now we know that it was only temporarily bandaged. The bandage is off, the wound is exposed and everyone has seen it. First the West Indian quicks hit the batsmen hard with the rising deliveries and we lost three top batsmen to bouncers or their aftermaths. The English followed the West Indian example. Hard hitting Raina was a casualty on both occasions. Yes, India still needs to work on the short ball. It shows us that a one-day series win against Australia in their backyard does not mean that we have sorted out all issues.

But, what really cost us the semifinal berth was lack of some discipline. India lost to England by 3 runs. Rewind to the England innings: the last ball of the 18th and the 20th overs were wides down the leg side that went for four, both by one of the senior most members in the side, Harbhajan Singh. That meant 10 free runs gifted to England and a lot of good work undone. In the end analysis, that cost us the match and the Cup.

The team management can also look back at some of the decisions and contemplate. The team selection against England betrayed the panic in the Indian camp. Dropping the in form Pragyan Ojha for Ravinder Jadeja to bolster the batting was not the best of moves. Even though Irfan’s place had been taken by R.P. Singh, India should have played Ojha purely because of the guile and heart that he has displayed off late.

In the end, it would be fair enough to say that India did not deserve a place in the semis, the other teams came up with organized plans and executed them to near perfection, and India could not cope. But, all is not lost. This team is still a world class outfit that is young and hungry. A loss at this stage will hurt the young and make them hungry. There is not a huge amount wrong with the team, just a few minor dents. For sure, Team India will be back and we don’t have to wait long for the next T20 world cup, unlike the 50 over cup, this one is once in two years. We’ll be back.