Will Indian cricket team terminate the dark shadow in 2013???

Undoubtedly indian cricket team is passing from a bad faze. After winning the 2011 world cup, indian cricket team has put all results on stake on the field, it may well have felt like doomsday was near. In the last nine Tests India played, of which six were at home grounds, and still had a ledger that showed only three wins against five losses. Two of those three wins were against New Zealand, ranked eighth in the Test ranking.

In the first half of 2011, team India won one day cricket only against Sri Lanka. Four wins in the World Twenty20 helped give the team a marginally higher than 50 percent win record, but were not enough to make the semifinal of the t20 world cup. The record got worse if the second half of 2011 is included, and Test cricket is in focus. India lost back to back cleen sweep from england and australia for 4-0. India last went through a phase of losing eight (or more) Tests in a row overseas only back in the 1959 to 1968 period.

After that England came to india, and every one thought, india will defeat england here but indian team performance swap away all indian happiness and england won the series from 2-1. India was lost a series in his homegrounds to england after twenty two years. This loss made Dhoni statement perplexing. He commented

"It was a tough series, but there are not many things that will come close to the loss in the 2007 50-over World Cup. This is not close to that.”

The 2007 ODI World Cup is often referred as india's worst show of play. India team lost to bangladesh in league matches and was out of tour. Iseemed to players and fans alike that the end was nigh, but in the overall scheme of things, the 2007 World Cup was prepared otherwise good results for the team. Before world cup tournament India won a Test series in West Indies and won a Test match in South Africa for the first time. After it, India won a Test series in England and against Pakistan at home. In limited-overs results, there was the incredible sequence of 19 successful chases in ODIs on the trot a year before the World Cup and the inaugural World Twenty20 title a few months after it.

The other recent occasions when India did not performed was in the 1999-2000 season, when they were sweeped 3-0 by Australia in Australia and 2-0 by South Africa at home. That, however, was followed by the match-fixing scandal that led to a change of guard and started India off on their excellent run built around a core of all-time great players. And even then, the margins of defeat were not as overwhelming. 

Then it was back in the 2004-05 season, when australia lost india in the home grounds where the greatest team of the past two decades finally realised their collective ambition of a series win in India. That time also the loss was the only one India faced at home for a long while, and while the immediate results after that weren’t great, they weren’t disastrous either.

Let us find how things have gone changed for the Indian team since the start of their England tour in 2011, and the contrast is stark. In the period book-ended by India’s losses to England home and away, the batsmen and bowlers off the mark. Bowlers gave 40 runs per a single wicket. That’s over 17 Tests, including nine at home. 

In that same period – extended to include the T20Is and ODI till the end of the year – India has scored fewer runs per over than their opponents across 32 ODIs and 16 T20Is on an average. In very short we can concede that kind of dip the team hasn’t gone through in a long while.

That said, it is not all doom for Indian cricket. The previous lows weren’t as extended as this one is because the core group remained largely constant and in form. This particular team is in transition, our seniors are retiring and youngsters are getting chances, so it is obvious that results on the field will fluctuate until the team settles. The darkest shadow will teminate and lights will be on as Australian team short on experience due to visit soon. This time is to terminate the dark shadow.