To my fellow Indian posters. This is not a badua or a curse. This Indian team is very solid and no doubt the best team in this world cup and full credit to them to for their preparations, bench strength, planning and making optimum use of their home conditions.
However in my world cup viewing experience, I always get nervous seeing teams peak too early where things are going so perfectly, every single player is in form and there are no concerns, issues. And then all of a sudden one bad day at the office in a Semi Final or Final ruins everything.
I hope I am wrong
To my fellow Indian posters. This is not a badua or a curse. This Indian team is very solid and no doubt the best team in this world cup and full credit to them to for their preparations, bench strength, planning and making optimum use of their home conditions.
However in my world cup viewing experience, I always get nervous seeing teams peak too early where things are going so perfectly, every single player is in form and there are no concerns, issues. And then all of a sudden one bad day at the office in a Semi Final or Final ruins everything.
I hope I am wrong
People put too much stock into performances in knockouts without looking at a teams issues first.
Many called us chokers in 2019. But many of us Indian fans even here on PP called that team overrated while going into the World Cup itself.
We didn't have a settled #4 , our #5 was ageing , past it and not making enough runs and had declined as a keep as well. And we tried to 2 play wrist spinners in every match instead of playing an extra fast bowler etc.
And then we lost Dhawan .
If others rated that side, then they clearly could not see the issues that were clear to the rest of us.
Kohli, Dhoni and Shastri had wrecked our white ball cricket with short sighted policies.
ODI teams require an entire World Cup cycle to build and they didnt know who was #4 even on the eve of the World Cup.
This time, Dravid and Rohit have ensured that the top 6 are settled and that's a big advantage for us.
My only issues were the fact that we don't have any one who can bowl Ifti chacha level off spin in our top order to play an extra batter and get batting depth .
So, selections of Thakur, Ash and Jadeja were the most questionable.
I still think Australia have more bases covered than any other team .
14 out of 15 players select themselves for their excellent records over the last 4 years. And the 15th performed against Pakistan the other night.
They have batting strength and depth , have won plenty of ODIs before the World Cup and they have some really good experience - many players have won 2015 World Cup , World T20 2021 and WTC final 2023 in that squad.
If India don't win and the Aussies win, it won't be a disappointment for me at least . They had the edge over us and we were never clear favourites ahead of them
If any other team wins ahead of us then it would be an extremely disappointing result.