It wasn’t just the Indian team that lost some of its sheen here in England this week; it was the Indian Premier League as well. As an entertainment package, it works. As a money spinner, it’s got no parallel in cricket’s long history. As a talent hunt, it has ‘discovered’ Yusuf Pathan and Pragyan Ojha.

But with its punishing schedule, its lowering of the bar in cricketing terms, its format that defines roles for players in relation to their club squads rather than the national team, and with the BCCI pushing for it to be held at a grand scale come what may, it ended up militating against a good performance from Team India in the World T20 championship.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s team came into this tournament tagged favourites thanks as much to their standing as defending champions as to the amount of T20 cricket they had played in the recent past. Most experts reckoned India had figured out the format, and most members of the team itself had mentioned how performances in the IPL had given them confidence ahead of the big title defence. That confidence, as it turned out, was misplaced.

The fact that all IPL teams were playing four foreign players gave them a beefy look, which was misleading as far as overall strength went. For every Herschelle Gibbs, there was also a Shoaib Maqsusi (the Deccan Chargers seamer who bowled 17 overs in eight matches at an economy rate of almost 9). There were world class bowlers in almost every line-up, but none of the bowling attacks, as units, could be tagged as world class.

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