Of Experience and Judgment

With an average combined experience of 123 games per player, India can hardly take refuge in lack of experience as an explanation for their dismal show in South Africa.  But if Virender Sehwag’s post-match comments are to be believed, India’s most recent walloping at Port Elizabeth is due to the side’s “inexperience” and the resulting “pressure” that they have had to contend with.

Quite frankly, such excuses are unacceptable at the highest level of the game, and it is unlikely that Viru will find too many buyers for his argument. But what makes the statement even more bizarre is the fact that it was not the “inexperienced” members who lost the game for India – it’s the much-celebrated “seniors”, Sehwag included, who let their team down.

A quick glance through the scorecard shows that of the 163 runs that India eked out, only 48 came from the six more experienced (over 100 ODIs) players, including a significant contribution of 11 runs from Zaheer Khan at number 9. The remainder was notched up by the so-called “inexperienced” lot. Also, for the record, top scorer Irfan Pathan (47* in 55 balls, 4×4, 2×6) is only 22 years old and into just his third year of international cricket, while the lowest scorer Sachin Tendulkar (1 in 3 balls) is 33 and has been on the scene for 17 years.

I suppose it isn’t entirely surprising to find a careless comment like this coming from Sehwag, given that poor judgment and recklessness seem to characterize everything in his cricket nowadays. Fortunately, now that he has been vacated from the vice-captain position for the test series, we will be subjected to his displays of injudiciousness only on the field and not off it.