CONGRATULATIONS KOHLI BUT WE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE IN TODAY BY PLACING PERSON ABOVE TEAM

CONGRATULATIONS KOHLI BUT WE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE IN TODAY BY PLACING PERSON ABOVE TEAM

India wasted 4-5 overs to accommodate cramped Kohli's WR 50th ODI century. At least 30 runs more could have been scored. Lucky we won through Shami's stellar performance. Could have proved costly. It's a team game. Individual records shouldn't come in the way of team's performance. Shreyas Aiyer's blistering century and Rahul's cameo added valuable runs but we missed 30 more easily. If Shami had not removed Williamson, who knows whether it would have been curtains here itself or not? Like Gill's retiring hurt on 79, Kohli should have been brought into the pavillion at 85 when he got his attack of cramps and Shreyas, Rahul, Surya and Jadeja should have been allowed to rip apart the New Zealand attack and pile up an unreachable score. Destiny deemed otherwise but it was a tactical mistake brought about by crowd expectation, team spirit calling for special allowance for the great man on the verge of world record and the tradition of allowing the performing individual to supercede the immediate requirement of the team. But it was a dangerous mistake and could have cost us the Cup. Not to be repeated.

P.S. Remember the ruffled feathers of Tendulkar when Dravid declared with the master stranded on 194* after he had crawled long towards a failed double hundred in Pakistan. The skipper Dravid had to make up for his apparent lapse with the maestro. That much for team spirit and the hankering for individual records!

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo: courtesy, Wikipedia