The Indian team arrived in London two weeks ago, punch drunk on success and the confidence that comes with it. Riding on 39 days of manic Indian Premier League action, they were the men in form, the side that had figured this format out. So what went wrong for Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team? Bad form? Bad planning? Bad luck?

Coach Gary Kirsten had one answer today: the IPL.

He was quite clear that the scheduling of the IPL, squeezed in between the New Zealand tour and the world Twenty20 championships, had a lot to do with the team’s disappointing showing. “We came into a tournament without being able to connect with the players at all. We got two days with the players,” Kirsten said this evening. “A lot of international teams had players in the Indian Premier League but they had a lot more time to prepare than us,” he said, referring to the fact that the Indians had been on the road even before that.

Was fatigue a factor? Definitely, he said. “We had players carrying niggles and not in the greatest form. A lot of those niggles were picked up during the IPL. We lost contact with our players during the IPL because they are connected and responsible to their franchises,” he said. “The amount of cricket didn’t help get over the niggles.”

It was a big victory for IPL organisers and the Board of Control for Cricket in India, getting the extravaganza up and running in a new country with two weeks’ notice. Hard on the players though, who had been on the road since they left for New Zealand in February. The first season of the IPL involved 59 matches over 45 days — and even that seemed intense. The second season was crunched, due to a combination of politics and economics, into 39 days. That much more travel, that much more intensity.

... contd.