Blue Billion at World Cup 2007

Apart from my take on our performance, Radha/ Rags linked me up to Sidin's sattire. But the perfect article, that Sriram pointed me to, is what Suresh Menon writes here; the extracts that must drive home the point are:

Quoting Suresh Menon(emphasis mine):

"... to term India's departure from the World Cup a tragedy is ridiculous. Tragedy is when a coach is murdered. Tragedy is when a world champion driver is killed on the circuit. Tragedy is not to understand what is tragedy. Dropping a catch is not a tragedy, being thrown out of the World Cup because batsmen can't score runs is not a tragedy. In fact, it is a farce."

"If a team with nearly 40,000 runs among them cannot chase 255 on a good batting track, they have no business to remain in the World Cup. And that has to be the bottom line. The economic and marketing reasons for India to advance cannot take precedence over the cricketing ones. On the field India were found wanting, and it does not matter how much of the money generated for the game comes from India."

" Before the tournament began, Bishan Bedi had said, "I don't know which will be worse - India winning the tournament or not winning it." Winning would have been great for the team, but bad for cricket; losing would have been good for cricket, but bad for the team. It will take a few months before the effigy-burners fully understand the wisdom of that point of view."

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