The state of India in ODI

Thanks to the last 1 or 2 years of ODI performance of the Indian cricket team, I am not a hard core addict to cricket anymore... but continue to be a keen enthusiast. But, that is not the point of this article... the point is about what the hell is going wrong?

In my mind the following are the reasons / root causes:

Point 1 - We dont have "any" all rounders in the current side. Even in the past one year, other than possibly Irfan for a brief stint we did not have a quality all rounder. Nassir Hussain as a commentator in the current India-England series has been very critical of this and correctly so. There are ppl who will say Yuvraj / Sachin / Saurav are allrounders... pls compare to Flintoff, Jacob Oram (NZ).... are our folks still all rounders?

Point 2 - Fielding... we say our standards have improved tremendously - but you just need to look at the current England team to see what improvement in standards mean. Australia, NZ and South Africa are far ahead ... now England seems to getting to their league. India is way behind (possibly the worst currently) - while we have a few good fielders like Yuvraj, our wicketkeepers are quite poor (Dhoni OR Kartik), Sachin/ Saurav/ Dravid are too old - average at max in the new standards, Powar/ Munaaf are pathetic and most others are average.

Point 3 - Killer instinct (related to aggression/ team spirit) - again I think we are in the league of West Indies in this matter ... and possibly Pakistan (who some years back during Waqar/ Wasims time had a lot of this). But most other quality teams including Sri Lanka is better in this in my view. Again, a lot of our folks play for individual records OR do not have the aggression in them to WIN every time/ every minute / every ball.. Saurav is possibly the best in this respect and all others are average or pathetic here. Is there a case to make Saurav the capt once again (Dravid to me is a gentleman and the game is no longer a gentleman's game... its rough, its fast, its rowdy!).

Point 4 - No sustained Excellence - Other than Dravid and possibly Sachin, I cannot name 1 player in the team in this parameter... all our bowlers and all our so called youth batsmen have fallen short on sustained excellence. Look at Australia - Simonds, Clarke (youth have have taken the game by its neck), McGrath, Pointing, Hayden, Gilchrist (oldies continue to raise the bar), Look at near to home Srilanka... look at NZ.... look at SA.... all these top teams have the oldies improving / sustaining and youth taking charge successfully!

What really is dissappointing is that in the corporate world India is really starting to successfully challenge and take on the world... but in sports we continue to deteriorate, continue to find excuses!

What is possibly the reason? My thought (atleast for cricket where there is no shortage of money) is completely political and incompetent management (ready BCCI).... I dont know enough ... but there would be players at grassroot who can be identified/ coached etc ...if not they need to be created and all of this is a BCCI responsibility?? Hence, though there are conflicting views on ICL .... I am all for it... a key reason for India's corporate competitiveness is the breaking of monopoly/ licence raj - same matra should work for cricket!