India’s T20I freefall explained: Did Gambhir and Agarkar fix what wasn’t broken?
Two months after India lifted their third T20 World Cup, Suryakumar Yadav was dropped as T20I captain. In came Shreyas Iyer, the prolific goalscorer who has dominated the Indian Premier League for the past two seasons.
When the news reached Shreyas, he was not surprised. Instead, in his casual, confident way, his first words were that he knew it was coming. “He expected it”.
It was an odd statement from a player who hasn’t played a single T20I since December 2023. But then again, that’s Shreyas, isn’t it? A player with tremendous confidence. His numbers in domestic cricket and the IPL warranted another shot in India’s T20I set-up, while his tactical acumen has long earned praise from teammates and coaches alike. There has been little debate as to whether it deserves a return. However, making him a captain was a much bigger challenge.
Shreyas was handed the captaincy of the world champion side and a dressing room full of proven match winners. Seven games later, that confidence was met with a brutal reality.
Things have gone horribly wrong, and the horror results naturally reflect the most on the captain. Shreyas Iyer became the first Indian captain to go winless in his first seven T20Iswhile the defeat in England marked India’s worst bilateral performance in the format. The seven defeats also leaves him alongside Shikhar Dhawan as the only Indian captain with more losses than wins.
It’s a hard fall for a team that hasn’t lost a single series between the 2024 and 2026 World Cups and has won tournaments on both sides. In fact, the Indian T20I team has been on a huge upswing since losing in the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup and has yet to see such days.
HOW THE MIGHTY FALL
Shreyas Iyer remains winless in seven matches on UK tour (Photo Reuters)
But this is not really a story about Shreyasi Iyer. Captains carry results more than anyone, but India’s collapse across Ireland and England speaks as much about the people who build this team as it does about the man who leads it. Gambhir and the selection committee decided to reset the T20 side that had just won the World Cup. Seven games later, it’s fair to ask if this reset caused more problems than it solved.
Before we get into all this, let me preface this by saying that we should not forget that Gautam Gambhir’s methods in white ball cricket helped India win both the ICC white ball tournaments during his tenure. What happened in Ireland and England happened in two bilateral series, and in isolation, it could make no difference if India lift another ICC title next year.
What is perhaps really worrying is that India looked like headless chickens for the first time in two back-to-back T20I series.
To see how bad things are right now, you have to go back in memory to Rahul Dravid’s India. Legendary former cricketer settled on his players 18 months before the ODI World Cupwhich was reflected in the team’s sensational undefeated streak until the finals. After a heartbreaking loss in 2023, Rahul Dravid led the Indian team to win the T20 World Cup in 2024, his only ICC trophy as the head coach of the Indian team. An incredible amount of data work was behind this victory. Dravid even asked for data on wind movements in the stadiums, as revealed by data analyst Himanish Ganjoo, who worked with the team during this period.
It was perhaps a severe fall from those standards when the Indian captain said earlier last week that he was unable to work out the position on the pitch in Ireland because there was no circle in Belfast and it had pockets not usually seen on cricket pitches. In England, India were once again behind in preparation and failed to adapt to the conditions in all their T20Is.
It was almost a reflection of Shreyas Iyer himself, who may not have had enough time to prepare and study after being announced as India’s captain. The announcement may not have come as a shock to him, but he was certainly left out, or woefully under-appreciated by the demands of T20I cricket, a format he hasn’t played in a couple of years.
This tactical unpreparedness at the top seeped right into the playing eleven and created a domino effect of bizarre selection dilemmas.
PATIDAR AND THE CHAOS BATTING ORDER
Rajat Patidar ignored by selection committee (PTI Photo)
An underprepared captain is bad enough. Add in subtle team management and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Take the Tilak Varma issue for example. Everyone knows that India’s biggest strength, a hyper-aggressive batting unit, is also their biggest weakness. There are days when the runs flow and there are days when the runs dry up just as quickly.
The main source of inconsistency in the batting unit is the top order, which often loses wickets when trying to make aggressive starts. In 2024, India played Tilak Varma at No.3, a direct antidote to this problem. If someone in the top order failed, Tilak had the ability to rebuild the innings before handing over to the finishers.
Tilak Varma was locked in as India’s No. 3 for the T20 World Cup, but due to miscalculations in India’s batting line-up, he was eventually moved to No. 5. It could not be his permanent spot, as Tilak’s best innings in T20Is came at No. 3, where he has two hundreds and three knocks of 152.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, the batsman finds himself at No.6, often facing spinners at the start of his innings, which is known to be his weaker side of the game.
The anti-spin struggles are not just Tilak Varma. India’s heavy left-arm batting unit has been exposed with right-arm spin in the FIFA World Cup T20 2026. One wonders if the team management has already found a solution. Unfortunately for India, left-armer Vaibhav Sooryavanshi turned out to be their biggest discovery in the T20 format. Well, they couldn’t control that.
However, here we run into the elephant in the room: the two-time IPL winning captain Rajat Patidar was ignored by the selection committee to the No. 3 or 4 spot, despite his proven ability to pitch in the rotation. Ideally, Rajat could compete with Shreyas and Tilak for the middle-order spot and depending on form, India could pick two out of the three.
Conversely, what did India do? Tilak Varma became the vice-captain and Shreyas Iyer the captain, securing two spots in the batting line-up. The selection committee didn’t take into account the fact that Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan were locked in at No. 1 and 3 and either Sanju or Vaibhav was No. 2. And there was no way they could bat Shreyas at No. 4, which meant that Tilak, despite being promoted to vice-captain, was always set up for failure.
A simple solution to this whole problem could have been for an established top-order batsman (like Ishan or Abhishek) to temporarily take over the captaincy of the Indian team. Shreyas Iyer, Tilak Varma and Rajat Patidar could then go in the middle order and the rest of the line-up will follow.
The confusion was not limited to the batting order either. India chopped and changed their bowling combinations as often, searching for an all-round balance that never quite materialised. Roles changed from game to game, specialists were asked to do jobs they weren’t chosen to do, and the team looked increasingly unsure of its own identity.
HAS GAMBHIR CRACKED THE T20I TEAM?
To top it all off, India failed to win a single match in two separate T20I series. Looking at it in isolation, it’s pretty useless; it is a bilateral series after all. But look deep enough and you’ll find that the team’s management never once stuck to their process. They chopped and changed after each play and looked very much like a panicked unit that just didn’t have a plan B or C when their plan A failed.
A settled, consistent playing eleven only happens when there is absolute clarity above. It requires a leadership group that relies on stable, objective cricketing logic rather than chasing headlines or pushing individual agendas. Unfortunately for Shreyas Iyer, he has stepped right into a chaotic environment where what he desperately needs now is not a new experiment in every game but solid, unbiased leadership.
Seven matches is perhaps not enough to judge the caliber of the captain. It is probably not enough to assess the coach either. But it is enough to judge the process. Right now, India’s process looks a lot less certain than it did two months ago.
One wonders if the Indian selection committee and team management, in its attempt to rebuild the Indian team for the next cycle, broke an Indian team that didn’t really need fixing?
– The end
Issued by:
Akshay Ramesh
Published on:
13 Jul 2026 11:15 AM IST