“The Ireland series was not even originally scheduled. It was like a pickle to the main course, which was England. But India embarassingly couldn’t handle the spice of the pickle, which is Ireland. Irrespective of what excuses can be cooked up for this, it’s a shocking and terrible defeat for Team India. Overconfidence is never healthy and it’s because of that, India’s story was over last night. India must be confident but not overconfident,” he added.

Ramesh noted that this loss is even more of a shock because most of the Indian players have been playing T20 cricket for about four months in the form of the T20 World Cup and the Indian Premier League.

“Yes, even an elephant occasionally slips up. But how can it happen against an Ireland? This is a shocker, especially for a team whose last T20 match was the final of a World Cup. After a month of T20 cricket in the World Cup, all the Indian players played another 3 months of IPL. To play 4 months of continuous T20 cricket and then lose to Ireland is unexplainable,” said Ramesh.

“India played shockingly poor cricket. They’ve been dropping catches from the T20 World Cup to the IPL to yesterday. They seem to always drop high catches. In the IPL, you can just bat or bowl and hide your fielding because of the Impact Player option. But in international cricket, you’ve to be a good fielder to be in the 11. Many players escaped in the IPL because of the Impact Player rule by just batting.”