Short bowling the cause for India's exit?

Don't think so. Agreed it was our nemesis, but these guys lost out against Sri Lanka at the slow pitch in St. Lucia too. People are forgetting that the 2007 T20 World Cup was in South Africa (they had faster pitches than the one at Barbados) and the games against Pakistan (group stage), England, South Africa and Australia started with all the teams bowling short pitched stuff. We got only 140 against Pakitan, close to 150 against South Africa because of that. But what was different then was that we fielded well, played fearless cricket (made Yusuf Pathan open on his debut in the finals, Uthappa batted at 3, drafted in Rohit Sharma during the middle of the tournament and weren't afraid to change our batting order), took ALL our catches (including a stunner by Kartik against SA), some amazing run outs (Rohit Sharma ran out Kemp in the South Africa game, Uthappa ran out Nazir in the finals). Here, Dhoni dropped Gayle, Jadeja was crap, Yuvraj looked jaded, even Raina (our best fielder) didn't look special. Compare it with Australia and England, they hold onto everything. Both of them have been the best teams in the tournament so far and both have struggled against quality spin. (Australia scored only 15 from Harbhajan's four overs and also struggled against Sri Lanka till White came in. Ajmal troubled England too). These teams struggle against quality spin, tour India consistently and still struggle against Bhajji etc, here there's no attitude problem.

The actual reason for India's exit would be, that they did NOTHING right. From team selection, fielding, not playing the short ball, planning and whatever else you may add. I know it's two World T20 disappointments in a row. But give the cricketers a break who bloody play bloody 50 ODIs (win most these days), IPL (entertain us to the core and still are accused of match fixing, etc). 6-7 Test Matches ( other than the loss to SA earlier this year, we haven't lost a Test match under Dhoni), Ranji Trophy cricket (it's back on track after the last finals) and other form of cricket benefit games. There is no reason to change your game if you're doing as well as this.

The team selection was an issue. In-form players like Virat Kohli (exceptional fielder), Robin Uthappa (better back up keeper/batsman than Dinesh Karthik), Manish Pandey ( with the exception of a few IPL games a better player than Murali Vijay in T20 cricket). When Sehwag was injured there was no way one of these guys wouldn't have got selected. When the team was selected, none of us gave the team a chance anyway. Why cry now? I'm sorry but I still don't blame Dhoni and co. entirely. It's more of an error on Srikhants side.

I don't expect a player like Suresh Raina to learn how to play the short ball and remain the same kind of player. Ganguly struggled with the short ball for almost the length of his entire career until a trip to Australia. Please tell me after this how many times did you see Ganguly come down to a spinner and loft him out of the ground( in 2003/2004 against Australia).

Enough with the bashing, lets back these guys, afterall you don't reach no.1 in Test cricket without talent and hope to see Dhoni lead us to more success in the future.