What is "bad form"? Perhaps the finest description of the phrase came from the inimitably subtle Ian Chappell - "When things go wrong, they go wrong horribly, and seemingly forever." But then, it seems, even the reverse of that statement is just as true.
Take two contrasting stories now - in the three years since his side lifted the World Cup (fittingly at home), Mahendra Singh Dhoni's Indian side have only pulled off one solitary Test win on foreign soil. That came at good old Kingston against the bumbling West Indies. That West Indies tour was followed up by a long transit in England. While India landed in the UK as the invincible world number one, they left having surrendered the Crown to their old colonial rulers. The England tour was soon followed by one to Australia, a few Tests at home, another tour to South Africa and now, New Zealand. In each of those countries - save at home - India were inostensibly blanked, and how.
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| Watching the Heavens Fall: Dhoni must reconjure belief |
The second story is that of a certain Queenslander called Mitchell Johnson. In the space of mere months, Mitchell Johnson has gone from being the laughing stock of the galaxy (think of what the Barmy Army did to him during his last Ashes tour to England) to the next big thing in fast bowling circles since Jeffrey Thomson. For weeks, he tortured a hapless English side in different corners of Australia. The war was so bad for the Poms that their casualties list contained grander stars than the residual side it left behind - Jonathan Trott (who turned his back early), Graeme Swann, Kevin Pietersen and nearly Captain Cook himself. One might have been excused for thinking Johnson's carnage would be over once the Ashes was done. But the tornado has only just reached South Africa and Ryan McLaren is already nursing a wounded head. This man seems like he can do no wrong. And he's destroying careers around the world too.
Johnson, they say, has rediscovered himself after having gone through a 'shock therapy' with the great Dennis Lillee. I don't know about the 'shock', but there certainly seems to have been a lot of 'therapy'. Lillee put him through some grind, in trying to iron out his technical flaws - from his wrist position, to his leap and even his fox-like canter to the crease. But was it simply the technical training that did Johnson so much good, or was it more the confidence he gained out of getting the final thumbs-up from an all-time legend?
Sport is played in the mind, they say. And if one were to go by how the Indian captain has been leading his troops on foreign soil, confidence seems the only important 'technical' ingredient a professional player would ever need. Going by his words at press conferences and post-match interviews, MS Dhoni seems to have lost that faith in his players while overseas. With each passing game, all that Dhoni has been saying is "we have been improving" - almost like a class teacher patting the back of his under-par student who is striving hard. Thus, when MS Dhoni walks in for the coin toss in Durban, Auckland or London, he isn't thinking about winning. He's thinking about making sure he doesn't lose. And in trying so hard not to lose, Dhoni has forgotten how to win. Gone are the days when the Indian skipper said, "we're here to enjoy the game and give it our best" (as he did say over the course of his maiden World T20 win in 2007). It's no more about enjoying the game for the world's most stressed out and grey-haired sportsman. Leading India is now about overseeing an underconfident bunch of kids "improve" under his weary and exasperated eyes. Only so do you find India lose a game that has all but been won, time and again, in different time zones. From Brendon McCullum's other-worldly 302 in Wellington to Faf du Plessis' marathon innings in Johannesburg, India has been winning the wrong half of the game, and failing to close it out at the end. The misery seems unending.
So what does it take to win a game? Bowling the opposition out for 105 isn't sufficient anymore. The key is belief. Does belief come before victory? If MS Dhoni could ensure that it did while in South Africa seven years ago, I'm pretty certain he still can. The skipper must now take a bolder call.
