Neither batting flopped, nor bowling was useless; Then why was Team India embarrassed in England? The biggest weakness revealed

Whenever there is a clash between India and England on the grounds of England, which is known as the Mecca of cricket, the excitement is at its peak. But the kind of defeat that Team India has faced in the recent match has raised many serious questions. Usually, the blame for defeat in any match is placed on poor shot selection by the batsmen or directionless bowling by the bowlers. But this time the story is completely different. From the captain to the coach, everyone is surprised that Team India came on the backfoot not because of its technology but because of a fundamental weakness. Laziness on the field weighed heavily, missed catches changed the entire match. The main and biggest reason for Team India’s defeat in this match was its very poor fielding. When you are playing against a strong team like England on their soil, you cannot take the saying ‘drop the catch, leave the match’ lightly. Indian fielders not only dropped very easy catches at many important junctures of the match, but also gifted many extra runs to the opposition team through mis-fielding. Taking advantage of these lives, England’s batsmen completely turned the tide of the match and shattered the morale of the Indian bowlers. Ground diving and bad throws increased the tension of the bowlers. In modern cricket, fitness and agility are kept at the top, but in this match the body language of the Indian players looked very sluggish. Due to loose fielding on the boundary line and inability to throw straight to the wicketkeeper, the batsmen easily stole double and triple runs. In pressure moments when the team needed to save one run each, these childish fielding mistakes put additional pressure on the bowlers. This was the reason that despite good bowling, Team India could not control the pace of runs of the opposing team. Is workload management becoming the reason for team laziness? Experts believe that due to playing cricket continuously, fatigue can be clearly seen in the players. Inability to react at the right time in the catching position and lack of accuracy in throwing shows that the level of mental and physical alertness of the players has dropped. Now the biggest challenge for coach Rahul Dravid and captain Rohit Sharma will be to take the team’s fielding standard back to the same old world class level before the upcoming matches, because without tight fielding it is impossible to win the series on English soil.