India need 2007-like T20 reset after crushing exit
Just a few minutes after India crashed to a humbling 10-wicket defeat against England in the semi-final of the T20 World Cup at Adelaide on Thursday, skipper Rohit Sharma sat in the dugout, just behind Rishabh Pant, with his head bowed.
Just a few minutes after India crashed to a humbling 10-wicket defeat against England in the semi-final of the T20 World Cup at Adelaide on Thursday, skipper Rohit Sharma sat in the dugout, just behind Rishabh Pant, with his head bowed.
It is amid the ruins of days such as this -- when campaigns end in anguish -- that what-ifs, what-could-have-beens, and what-should-be, become both important and apparent.
“With the ball, we didn’t turn up today,” Rohit said in the post-match conference. “When it comes to knockouts, it’s all about handling the pressure. You can’t teach anyone to handle pressure.”
But, pressure aside, a key question for Rohit now that a promising journey has ended in heartbreak is whether India needed to press the reset button once he took over as the white-ball captain. At the time, the team, under Virat Kohli, had just crashed out of the 2021 T20 World Cup, and the Mumbai Indians skipper -- a winner of five IPL titles -- stepped up to take charge. It was a change many wanted, but, 12 months later, it hasn’t amounted to much.
On October 24, 2021, India lost to Pakistan by 10 wickets in the group stage of the T20 World Cup. A year later, they received another 10-wicket thrashing. What’s strange is that the sides that played the two matches were largely the same. The only difference was that in 2021, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah and Varun Chakravarthy were part of the XI, and on Thursday, they were replaced by Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin. Two of these changes were forced as Jadeja and Bumrah picked up injuries.
When he took over, Rohit talked about playing a new game, he spoke about aggression and experimentation. But as the team lined up for this edition of the T20 World Cup, little had changed, prompting the same questions that were asked a year ago -- Do Team India have a plan? Are they picking the right players for the T20 format?
Slow starts hurt
Over the last year, the problems in the shortest format have remained largely the same. The top three in the line-up are players who need to face a few deliveries -- a precious commodity in T20 cricket -- before they get going. Against England on Thursday, KL Rahul scored a run-a-ball 5, Rohit struggled to 27 off 28 balls, and Virat Kohli got 50 off 40 balls. This may be just one match, but India’s average run rate of 6.02 in the first six Powerplay overs shows that starting troubles have plagued them throughout the tournament. Only the UAE scored slower than India in the Powerplay overs. And if you get so far behind the rate at the start, you are always playing catch-up.
“The top three are world class. Only a change was needed in their approach. They showed that approach before the World Cup but they were a bit conservative in this World Cup. I am talking about the openers in particular,” said former chief selector MSK Prasad.
That India largely succeeded to catch up in the earlier matches in the tournament was due to a blinder by Kohli against Pakistan, and the unabated belligerence of Suryakumar Yadav who scored 239 runs in the tournament at a startling strike rate of 189.68.
The overreliance on one sheet anchor and one aggressive batter in T20 cricket is asking for trouble -- and a simple comparison with other teams that are packed with aggressive batters highlights that.
On the bowling front, the lack of options hurt India.
They were without Bumrah, and his absence highlighted how India just didn’t have enough firepower. They had to go back to Mohammed Shami, who hadn’t played a single T20I for India after the 2021 T20I World Cup, in their search for a replacement. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Arshdeep had decent tournaments, but the trio, especially when there was no swing on offer, lacked a cutting edge in the absence of raw pace. And the Indian spinners never looked like a threat.
Important to find a style
Over the years, England have found a brand of cricket that they want to play -- they bat deep and are confident of chasing everything down. Australia pack their side with all-rounders. Pakistan have a bowling attack that is the envy of the world. New Zealand have many contributors, and no one stands out as they go for it.
What is India’s brand? How do they want to play the T20 game?
When Rohit took over as captain, he had a clean slate, and could have moved away from the established order by looking at players whose style of play would have been a more natural fit in T20 cricket. But India chose continuity instead of adventure.
This is where the side could have taken a page out of MS Dhoni’s book.
Many senior players gave the 2007 T20 World Cup a miss after Rahul Dravid (now the coach of the team), Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly decided to give an opportunity to young cricketers after an early exit from the 2007 ODI World Cup.
This decision gave the team that landed in South Africa an entirely different vibe, flavour and mindset. It helped that there were no expectations -- but the run to the title was so emphatic that it also laid the foundation for the ODI World Cup triumph that followed in 2011.
Dhoni had a very clear idea about who he wanted in the team, and what he wanted them to do. If someone, no matter how senior, did not fit the requirements, he let them go.
After last year’s defeat and change of guard, a 2007-like reset under Rohit could have helped the current team.
As captain of the Mumbai Indians, Rohit knows that role players are key in the shortest format. But India continued to present a confused face — one that showed in Rohit’s batting too, and legitimate questions will now be asked about his own place in the XI.
“The Indian thinktank needs to look at itself in the mirror and ask itself ‘what is their best T20 team?’,” said former India selector Jatin Paranjpe. “The sameness of the ODI and T20 squads is a problem when the demands of the two formats are so different. Prithvi Shaw, Shubman Gill and Sanju Samson should be in the mix and the BCCI needs to get their strategic planning sorted. You can’t have the best T20 league in the world and a national team that isn’t cutting it. We need to shed ourselves from saying just nice things.”
India decided to go with the quality-will-tell tactics that have served them well in ODIs. They tried to be sane in a format that demands more than a hint of mayhem. It all came undone in a way that many expected, but no one wanted.
So what now?
Think of recasting the T20 team, like the one in 2007 under Dhoni. Develop a game plan that fits, and pursue it relentlessly. It’s not always easy to step into the unknown — but it’s worked before.