Cricket: Will India Reach Its Potential?

India have been perennial underachievers in One Day International Cricket. If you could equate Spain and India in any way, it would be in that both the countries' major sports' teams (football and cricket, respectively) fail at the big stage.

We have a rich history, including a World Cup victory in 1983. We celebrate that win till today (Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar are celebrating the silver jubilee of that win with the other cricketers and the BCCI).

But the game has changed today—it is a place for dynamism and power.

The Indian team in the 1990s had a considerable amount of talent, but the team was never a unit. It was a group of individuals—something which I must admit is changing today.

There was never a "Plan B" and the team would play extremely well one day and incredibly poor on another—overall, the team was average.

We relied on Jadeja for his fielding and Robin Singh shared the burden after he arrived. We have always relied on Sachin Tendulkar (that reliance is clearly reducing today), Mohd. Azharuddin and Saurav Ganguly in the batting department. The bowling was poor, but we still had some very stable bowlers in the form of Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble.

The distinguishing feature of that team was that we had specialists and no all-rounders—I'm including fielders in this category as well! The team relied on one or two players, won some and lost some but invariably disappointed all the fans.

Fast forward to today, and we notice this Indian team is young and dynamic. Every player wears his heart on his sleeve and seems to give a 100 percent for the team. Each player has a role specified in the team. The fielding has improved considerably, and the whole team fields as a unit.

Let me add that the captain, MS Dhoni, is also responsible for this paradigm shift in Indian Cricket. If you had told any Indian 10 years ago that you would have a captain like him, that person would have laughed at you.

He seems to be above all the politics within Indian Cricket. He also has the courage and the temperament to succeed at this level and every decision he's taken as a captain has seemed to have paid off, till date.

While experience is a key factor in determining victory or defeat in any sport, the only way you can gain experience is by playing at the highest level. My feeling is that this Indian team is young and yet experienced.

Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag and Irfan Pathan are relatively young and yet have a considerable amount of experience. Added to these players, we have players like S. Sreesanth, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Gautam Gambhir, who are very talented.

It's just a perfect blend of youth and experience.

Maybe the Indian Premier League has exaggerated the quality of Indian cricket, but on paper, the Indian team looks very good.

The best thing about today's team is the fact that it has a considerable amount of bench strength. We never seemed to have enough backups in the 1990s or even before that. Today, we seem to have at least two players per position, which is fabulous.

Of course, we saw an average Indian performance in the finals of the tri-series in Bangladesh, but that was complacency. I think that this Indian team is finally ready to take it to the next level and challenge for the big prizes.

Gone are the days when India would sneak into the finals of tri-series by winning the last, must-win match. Gone are the days when we relied on one or two players.

The Indian team is here—big time.

If MS Dhoni can marshal his troops in the right way—on and off the field, there is no reason why we cannot win the upcoming Asia Cup and the Champions Trophy.

If the attitude is right and the players apply themselves, there is no reason why this Indian team cannot achieve its potential. If they do, I'm sure they will be destined for greatness.