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Follow UsSometimes in life, the only way you can snap out of delusion is by suffering a humiliation so bad that you end up re-thinking everything, and finally come to the realization that you need to get your s**t together.
For a decade, India were under the impression that they were playing T20 cricket the right way because they consistently made the semi-finals of T20 World Cups.
‘Their way’ was focusing on run scoring and run accumulation, avoiding taking risks until absolutely necessary and playing to ‘not lose’ rather than playing to win.
And then Adelaide 2022 happened.
India entered the semi-final of the 2022 T20WC against England stubborn that ‘their method’ was the best, and so, batting first, posted 168/6 after ‘assessing the conditions’ and ‘playing the situation’. As skipper Rohit Sharma’s words after the game suggested, 168 was, in their minds, a totally acceptable score which was close to par.
Except it wasn’t. England knocked down the target with four full overs to spare, and did not lose a single wicket in the process. That night, Jos Buttler and Alex Hales could have batted for another nine hours and they would not have come close to getting dismissed.
Rohit blamed the bowling in the immediate aftermath of the defeat, but, deep down, he knew.
He knew that his side needed to snap out of the delusion that their way of playing T20 cricket was right. He knew that this entire group of players needed to unlearn and relearn the art of batting in T20 cricket and rewire their brains to keep up with the format’s evolution.
Early days, but from whatever we’ve seen of team India in this T20WC so far, the same group of players seem to have successfully rewired their brains and seem to have understood what’s actually required to go all the way in T20 World Cups.
India are in the semi-finals of a T20WC — this is not something new. But quite remarkably, they don’t have a single batter in the top five run-getters chart. Rohit, seventh on the list with 191 runs, is in fact the only Indian in the top ten run-getters list.
When was the last time you saw India make a deep run in any white-ball tournament with none of their batters being among the top run-getters?
Virat Kohli having a shocker of a tournament has contributed to this aforementioned fact, but it’s more-than-partly a consequence of a conscious decision the entire team has made, which is to take more risks as a batting group.
The Super 8s stage saw every team play three matches. And the stage included sides like West Indies, Australia, England and South Africa that are filled with intent merchants throughout the batting order.
Yet only England (70.2%) attacked a higher percentage of balls than India (66.2%).
This is not something that’s happened by chance. It’s a planned course of action from India, which has been reflected in the way they’ve set up their team.
Opening with Rohit and Kohli might look like a defensive move on paper, but the team have done that in order to accommodate an intent-merchant in Rishabh Pant at No.3, and a spin-basher in Shivam Dube at No.5. The Dube gamble might not have paid off till now, but Pant’s aggression played a direct hand in the side winning the Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan clashes.
Meanwhile, they have stacked their batting till No.8 — with Jadeja/Axar the designated No.8 — to embolden and encourage their specialist batters to take more risks. As dominant as India were in the 50-over World Cup, the team was imbalanced after Hardik Pandya’s injury due to the painfully long tail.
It came back to bite the side in the final, as, after the fall of early wickets, the middle-order was forced to go to max conservative mode in order to ensure that the tail was not exposed too soon.
In this T20WC, however, the management have addressed that issue by prioritizing balance over everything else, which is what has historically been pivotal in T20WCs.
India taking these many risks, and showing this much intent, deep into a T20WC is unprecedented. The Men in Blue have played five T20 World Cups in the past decade (including this one).
Never have they ever batted this aggressively in the Super 8s/ 10s/ 12s stages of the competition.
And, mind you, some of these previous World Cups were played on absolute batting paradises, unlike the ongoing tournament, which has provided plenty for the bowlers.
Evidently, then, the humiliation in Adelaide 18 months ago seems to have instilled a much-needed change in the team’s approach and mentality. It’s been personified by none other than the skipper himself, Rohit.
In the 2022 T20WC, Rohit’s conservatism proved to be a microcosm of the team’s overall approach. He registered a strike rate of just 94 in the powerplay, and was going nowhere with the bat in hand.
In this World Cup, however, Rohit is striking at 147 in the powerplay. In each of the team’s last two clashes (against Australia and Bangladesh, respectively), he left the opponent shell shocked for a fair while through his onslaught upfront.
All that being said, the true litmus test for this particular group will be in the semis and then the final. Batting like there’s no tomorrow in the group stages and Super 8s is one thing, but it’ll require guts, courage and immense self-belief to play the same way in the final two games of the competition, purely because of what’s at stake.
It’ll require completely letting go of the fear of failure, something this group of players were not able to do in the semis of the T20WC against England in 2022, and in the final of the 50-over World Cup against Australia last year.
So, is this really a transformed India? Or is it going to be yet another false dawn, with the team retreating and going back to conservative tactics when push comes to shove?
We’re about to find out.
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