Having been crowned world champions in the recently concluded World T20 cricket championship, our cricket team looked minnows before the same Sri Lankans team they had defeated in the finals at Lords a few days ago. On return of the team, there were a series of receptions with superlatives laid thick for the players. The government, as ell as various organizations, showered the team with rewards and awards in cash and kind. The electronic media billed them as the wonder boys of cricket. Even our political leaders made sweeping statements of eulogy and the whole nation had a smile on their faces. But all this jubilation was very, very short-lived. The smile turned into a grimace when the nation saw the same team collapse shamefully in the Test series against Sri Lanka immediately after the T20 World Cup. They lost the series even before it had really begun. Had they played with responsibility, concentration and application, they would have definitely won the first two tests easily against the Sri Lankans. But the latter won them by simply showing better maturity and responsibility. Our team had the potential to win but lost it all by just being careless. -MUHAMMAD AZHAR KHWAJA, Lahore, via e-mail, July 14.