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New Delhi. For a month, a nation of 1.2 billion cricket-crazy fans woke up at an early hour and switched on their televisions hoping to watch India’s favorite sons winning their first test series in Australia.

With captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his Indian team hurtling from one humiliation to another in Australia, most have stopped this self-flagellation.

Instead, they are wondering what happened to the bunch that promised to rule cricket much like West Indies and Australia have done in the past.

A myopic board, an indifferent captain and the transition crisis that both have been trying to flee from have largely led to the spectacular decline of the team.

As the world’s richest cricketing entity, the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s rude financial health remains a role model for other sports federations surviving solely on government largesse, not its short-sightedness.

Last of the top boards to embrace Twenty20, the BCCI sniffed easy money in cricket’s shortest format and launched the Indian Premier League, which now has an estimated $3.67 billion brand value, in 2008. While it secured many a career, the IPL also effected a change which resulted in an IPL slot being more coveted than an India test cap.

For many budding cricketers, the very thought of whacking every ball out of the park in Twenty20 appears more exciting than the painstaking craft of grafting. This in a country notorious for producing batsmen vulnerable against seam and bounce, which England and Australia have exposed in the last six months.

The Punjab Cricket Association has already banned its Under-21 players from all Twenty20 tournaments, including the IPL, to make sure the brevity of the crash-bang format is not allowed to paper over the cracks of their technical inadequacies.

The BCCI, though, remains blind to reality and immune to demands for promotion of four-day cricket and the need to help batsmen improve their technique. The board also ignores the transition crisis that looms large over the team.

Aging stalwarts Sachin Tendulkar (38), Rahul Dravid (39) and V.V.S. Laxman (37) are well past their prime, but a lack of succession plan means there will be big boots to fill when the BCCI eventually phases out the seniors.

“We can’t always think short-term. We need to start building a team as well,” former India opener Anshuman Gaekwad said.

Building a team for future was the theme of Dhoni’s after he guided India to the 50-over World Cup victory in Mumbai last year.

Ten months later and Dhoni himself appears to have lost interest in the longer version of the game, hinting in Perth that he might quit test cricket to focus on the 2015 World Cup.

“I definitely feel that Dhoni does not enjoy test cricket,” former India skipper Sourav Ganguly said. “His performance in test and ODI cricket are poles apart and by making such a statement, he has also perhaps explained his complete disinterest in the longer format of the game.”

Dhoni’s leadership has lacked the usual edge in Australia, and he was ridiculed by experts who likened him to a bank clerk with no passion or anger. He hardly looked like the captain of the team that won the World Cup and topped the test ranking last year.

It has been a steady decline under Dhoni as India got whitewashed in England last year and faces another in Australia now, triggering a media backlash and prompting an Indian model to call them “faithful husbands” who “perform only at home.”

Introspection has never been the BCCI’s strong point, but the rout in Australia merits a thorough soul-searching . The earlier it realizes it, the better it is for Indian cricket.

Reuters