Media turn on toothless India

India's batsmen put up a poor performance

India's cricket journalists are falling over each other in Thursday's newspapers to deliver the most biting criticism of their team's performance against Holland in the World Cup.

"India fail to lose against Holland" is perhaps the prize-winning headline, from The Asian Age.

"Game won, face lost" is the Hindustan Times' view of Wednesday's game, while The Hindu describes it as "An embarrassing victory".

One shudders to think what teams like Australia will do to this side

Hindustan Times

"Wanted: An Indian batsman who can bat" is the title of a piece by Dilip Vengsarkar in The Indian Express.

He lambasts "the utter failure of a batting line-up which is rated as the strongest in the world."

Humbled by amateurs

That's mild stuff though compared to the Hindustan Times' match reporter, Pradeep Magazine.

India's "famed batting strength seems to be a myth created by the advertising world to fool gullible fans," he said.

Dutch fans were happy despite the defeat

At one point, he writes, it did indeed seem India could lose to Holland - or "this bunch of amateurs" as he calls them.

"One shudders to think what teams like Australia will do to this side."

India's batsmen were bowled out for just 204 by the amateur side.

India eventually won by a comfortable 68 runs, but that was largely due to the inadequacies of the orange team's top order against seam bowling.

Middle-aged foes

For some writers, the performance is more a reason to laugh than cry.

MJ Akbar in the Asian Age blames India's poor performance on the Dutch themselves.

"It was unfair of Holland" to have only one 40-year-old bowler, Roland Lefebvre.

"Both their opening bowlers should have been middle-aged. Then it would have been a more equal contest against the finest opening pair in the history of one-day world cricket." referring to Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.

The only thing the Indian cricketers will be doing when they are 40, says Mr Akbar, is to "stare longingly over their paunches at all the loot they have collected" from their advertising sponsors.

Such levity is hard to find elsewhere.

Indeed, Avirook Sen in the Hindustan Times says that after India's batting performance on Wednesday, the relationship between "the Indian team and the Indian fan has gone sour".

We fans, he says, have done all that the players asked to support them, including registering "for stupid online competitions, but now it's time we registered our protest".

India would have done the fans a favour by actually losing to Holland, he says.

"By winning, they left a residue of hope - like hot dung on a tiger's track. We [the fans] will probably follow the scent."