Former India opener Sadagoppan Ramesh launches scathing criticism indian teamHe accused the visitors of treating the hosts with too little contempt and paying the price for their complacency after they suffered a 34-run loss to Ireland in the first T20I on Friday.India failed to bat in the chase of 183 and the Shreyas Iyer-led team were bowled out for 148 before completing the allotted 20 overs. The result also marked Ireland’s first win over India in any international competition.Ramesh believes the root cause of the defeat was overconfidence, which showed that India were mentally diverting their attention to the upcoming series in England rather than respecting their Irish opponents. He praised Ireland for executing their plan intelligently, especially taking advantage of the bigger boundaries and bowling the Indian batsmen with short pitches.Ramesh said on his YouTube channel: “Irish deserve credit for taking advantage of bigger boundaries and testing the Indian batsmen with short overs. It’s obvious that India played the game casually. They thought the Ireland series was a picnic trip and they would win easily and they only took the England series seriously. But Ireland taught India a lesson that this is no picnic spot.”India struggled throughout the chase and only Abhishek Sharma Make a meaningful contribution. The left-handed opener smashed 49 runs in just 20 deliveries while the rest of the batting line-up, including skipper Shreyas Iyerfailed to have an impact. Iyer’s stay at the crease lasted only seven balls.Ramesh continued his criticism, calling the Ireland series an unexpected addition to India’s schedule, but insisted it could never justify the performance of the Indian team.“The Ireland series was not scheduled to begin with. It was like pickle for the main course (England). But embarrassingly, India couldn’t handle the spice of Irish pickle. Whatever excuse can be concocted for this, it was a shocking and horrific defeat for the Indian team. Overconfidence is never healthy and because of that, India’s story ended last night. India must be confident but not overconfident. ” he added.Ramesh also said that the defeat was unacceptable considering that India entered the series as the defending T20 World Cup champions. He questioned how a team that had spent months playing top-level T20 cricket, including the World Cup and IPL, could perform so poorly against Ireland.Ramesh said: “Yes, even elephants make mistakes once in a while. But how could something like this happen against Ireland? It is really shocking, especially for a team whose last T20 match was the World Cup final. After playing T20 cricket for a month in the World Cup, all Indian players played 3 more months of IPL. Playing T20 cricket for 4 months and then losing to Ireland is inexplicable.”The former batsman also pointed to India’s sloppy fielding as another major reason for the defeat, stressing that repeated catch errors allowed Ireland to score a challenging total of over 180 runs. He further stated that the impact player rule in the IPL enables some players to cover up flaws on the field which is not possible in international cricket.“India’s cricket performance has been very bad. From the T20 World Cup to the IPL, until yesterday, their catch numbers have been declining. They always seem to be dropping high catch numbers. In the IPL, you can just bat or bowl and hide your fielding because of the impact player option. But in international cricket, you have to be a good fielder to make it to the eleven. Many players get away with it in the IPL because of the impact player rule just to bat.”
