Team India captain Suryakumar Yadav and head coach Gautam Gambhir (PTI Photo) MS Dhoni, who always tends to wear a poker face and is usually tight-lipped about cricket, broke character at the event when asked about India’s chances in the T20 World Cup. His eyes widened as he said ominously, “This is one of the most dangerous teams out there. They have everything a good team needs.”Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SIGN UP NOW!It is difficult to maintain consistency in a format as volatile as T20 cricket. Yet this Indian team arrived at the tournament with an aura of invincibility. Since the tournament’s inception, only Australia in 2007 and England in 2022 have been placed as overwhelming favourites. Only England have lived up to their billing when they lifted the trophy at the MCG, although their cricket faltered soon after. This makes India the first defending T20 champions who are still head and shoulders above the rest, much like Australia’s ODI teams in the first decade of the 21st century.
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The process of forming this formidable and perfectly balanced unit was thorough. It often bordered on ruthlessness, as when the team management and selectors decided that the style of play – and indifferent form – of vice-captain Shubman Gill – was unbalancing the team and dropped him from the team.T20 cricket requires a degree of forethought. It leaves almost no room for on-the-fly reaction. “Flexibility” soon became a buzzword, so much so that it began to look whimsical during the home series against South Africa in December. Captain Suryakumar Yadav preferred to bat behind Axar Patel and Shivam Dub. Gill and Surya’s dip in form coincided with the management desperate to compensate with eccentric moves. The nerves were obvious. Suddenly, playing medium-high-scoring matches became a safer zone – a strategy that went directly against the core principles of head coach Gautam Gambhir.The wild side of Gambhir’s character never allowed him to enter the tournament by abandoning these principles. Ahead of New Zealand’s arrival for the T20I series last month, the team’s leadership has been turned around. India swapped Gill’s conservative approach at the top for the combativeness of Ishan Kishan, who made an immediate impact. The pieces fell into place smoothly. It didn’t matter that Tilak Varma was still recovering from abdominal surgery, that new vice-captain Axar had missed several matches with an index finger injury or that Washington Sundar’s availability for the World Cup remained uncertain.The obsession with left/right combinations has been conveniently thrown out the window. Batsmen batted in precisely defined roles. There was no need for major shuffling in the batting order. Specialists are back in fashion. The first hint was to bring Rinka Singh back into the mix. The all-rounders came in to bat from No. 5 onwards and bowled after the specialist bowlers had done their job. India opted for a specialist spinner in Ravi Bishnoi to replace the all-rounder Washington. They found flexibility in a stable environment. The idea is simple: score in big numbers and let world-class bowlers like Jasprit Bumrah, Varun Chakravarthy, Arshdeep Singh and Kuldeep Yadav dominate the opposition batting even on the flattest of packages.This T20I team has been in the making since Gambhir took over as head coach. He has the most authority in this format compared to the other two formats. Over the past 18 months, he’s been experimenting with a clear vision: to build a team that thrives on aggression. Now he has arrived at a combination that looks stronger than the team that won the 2024 World Cup.There is a calm in the camp that would make the opposition tremble in their boots. The fact that Varma has only recently returned to the team and that the status of Washington’s recovery remains a mystery doesn’t seem to bother management. They’re in a space where they’re not losing sleep over finding a similar replacement for Washington if he can’t get into shape during the tournament. In that case, it will not be a surprise if Bishnoi keeps his place.Axar was batting at No.5 in the warm-up match against South Africa on Wednesday. That had more to do with giving him time to get into the crease. However, when India begin their campaign on Saturday, one doesn’t really see the need to bat that high. Harshit Rana, who has emerged as a capable lower-order batsman at No.8, has given the team management the luxury of fielding more specialist bowlers. As Dhoni said, the team has everything it has – form, combination and familiar conditions. But he also warned that dew and one off day at a critical time could stop this juggernaut. India’s World Cup must lose.
