Heartbreaking but hardly surprising

The result of the India-Australia match on 29th October could hardly be said to be unexpected. The Aussies, though an increasingly ageing side and no longer invincible, are still the strongest team in world cricket. The Indians, on current form, probably rank just above Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and England.
To any objective observer of the game (unfortunately that seems to rule out a huge percentage of Indian fans) the Indian team's decline in the last 8-10 months has been obvious. Yet, ostrich-like, the great Indian cricket-loving public continued, till yesterday, to bury their collective heads in the sand. After every defeat the captain would claim that 'the boys' had done their best, winning isn't everything, etc. etc. Before the start of each match he'd claim that they'd put the past behind them. Regrettably the past seems to have other ideas and is currently clinging to Dravid & co. like a limpet or a long-lost brother.
Since every cricket-loving Indian has either seen the game on the idiot-box or has read all about it in today's newspaper, I'll skip the match details. (Nobody's paying me to do a report on the match!) Rather, I'd like to put to the blogosphere at large a few questions which have been nagging me since the game ended.

1)How many members of the Indian team were actually playing for India as opposed to playing to secure a spot on the South African tour? Kaif's stubborn refusal to play shots almost certainly forced Dravid to play the horrible stroke which cost him his wicket. Dinesh Mongia's prime concern seemed to be to get to 30-40 odd at any cost, no matter how long it took him. The less said about Raina the better. And while Dhoni managed a run a ball, he seems to forgotten how to hit boundaries. This is no longer the free-spirited Dhoni who used to wield his bat like a mace.

2)Can anyone remember when was the last time Sachin Tendulkar came good when the chips were down ?

3)Why was Kaif sent in to bat ahead of Dhoni when acceleration was the need of the hour?

4)Why does the Indian team always slow down to a near crawl between the twentieth and the fortieth overs thereby frittering away any advantage a good start may have given them? A propos the same point, why does every Greg, Dick and Harry in the support staff have a laptop if they can't do simple multiplication tables to work out when the batsmen should start putting their feet on the accelerator? Rocket science it isn't.

5)Why did the Indian team walk out to field believing it had already lost? Their body language made it obvious that they were simply going through the motions.

There are many more such questions but answers, frank answers, do not seem to be forthcoming. Meanwhile Indian cricket goes round in circles losing on the swings what we'd gained on the round-abouts. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose " which translates as "The more things change, the more things stay the same"