New Year, New India but a strange one

2020 and 2021 has been pathetic if you are an Indian. Our economy suffered, many of us lost our loved ones but at the end of the day, at least the Indian Cricket team made us proud. It has been completely different in 2022. There's a new variant in the market, so is a new Indian team. The team that used to dominate in any format of the game is struggling to win a game is very sad. South Africa was considered to be a cake walk but the way Proteas are throwing challenges to the Indians, thus deserve a lot of credit. With that what happened is that after losing the test series, India lost the first One Day International as well.

Losing the toss, India was sent to bowl first and they started exactly where they ended the test series. Even after two early wickets, the bowlers failed to dominate and thus Temba Bavuma and Van Der Dussen took full advantage of it and helped South Africa reach a massive total of 296 runs. Both of them scored a century as the captain scored 110 runs while Van Der Dussen remained not out at 129. Despite playing 5 proper bowlers and one all-rounder failing to take opponents wickets is something that is bothering India for quite some time now. Stand-in Captain KL Rahul has faced a lot of criticism as despite having a sixth bowling option, the captain didn’t use him at all. Venkatesh Iyer is a decent bowler and thus not giving him the bowl even when India desperately needed a wicket was a very strange call.

Despite putting up a big score, the Proteas were under a lot of pressure. They did dismiss Rahul for 12 but the way Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli were batting, winning was definitely on the cards. However, the same problem struck again as India failed to capitalize. Maharaj’s brilliant delivery knocked Dhawan’s stumps while Virat literally gave his wicket when he was batting at 51. Even after that, you can’t really blame him because it was indeed unfortunate by the way he was dismissed. Dhawan was the highest scorer for the team as the opener scored 79. There were a lot of expectations from Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer but both of them failed to impress. Shardul’s 50 towards the end didn’t help at all as India lost the first one day international by 31 runs.

Thus, like said previously, 2022 has been pathetic for the Indian Cricket team. In the three matches that they have played, team India failed to win any of those. Not very ideal for the team. It will be interesting to see whether India continues with 5 bowlers in the next match or play an extra batsman. By the look of the last match, they were desperately looking for an extra batter.