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| England beating the Aus side back then was a far bigger achievement than the whitewash of the current India team.
The current India team has been ruined by the IPL. Do the Indian players care? Not when they are getting paid that much no.
PS I'm not Indian. I'm just trying to be objective. The England team is good for sure...made to look a lot better by a poor Indian side playing away from home. | |
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More than the Indian players, its the Indian board which needs to be blamed for the crazy schedule which makes the players play as if they are robots.
The board didn't allow even the World Cup victory to sink in, neither for the fans nor the players. The IPL started just within a week of the World Cup victory.
The IPL is the Indian board tournament and whilst a player can opt out, it can be held against him. Especially if he happens to be a top star. E.g. just look at what Mahindra Singh Dhoni had to go through to keep his IPL masters (Chennai Super Kings, run by the present Chief of the Board) happy. Dhoni went to SA, then came back and played the WC then immediately the IPL (almost two months non-stop), then somehow managed to avoid the ODI series in West Indies but played the Test series there and then the entire English tour. Within a couple of days of coming back from England, he was captaining the Chennai Supper Kings in the Champions League. The guy must have been so tired and jaded physically and mentally that he termed CSK's loss in the preliminary rounds of the Champions League as a "blessing in disguise". This, from a proud Captain having taken the same team to victory thrice (I think. Two IPL titles and one Champions League title). One can imagine how bad it must have been for him.
This has been the same story with almost every top player. The Indian players do care but do not want to antagonise the Board, since the playing careers are short and the competition to get in to the national team intense. If one opts out (unless forced by injury) for rest etc. the fear of not getting back again is intense.