Team India players celebrate with the trophy after winning the T20 World Cup 2026. (AP Photo) Rinus Michels, coach and manager of Ajax and the great Dutch football team of the 1970s, tore the football tactics textbook to shreds and came up with Totaalvoetbal, translated into English as ‘Total Football’. It freed players from the fixed, traditional roles of striker, midfielder and defender, allowing players to find space and exploit high pressure. The defenders attacked and the attackers defended. Captain Johan Cryuff embraced the idea, taking it to Ajax and Barcelona as a manager, and today we have Pep Guardiola at Man City who still uses it with minor tweaks of his own. The 1974 Dutch team is often called the best team never to win the FIFA World Cup. However, she created a dynasty and left a legacy.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SIGN UP NOW!Ever since their heady triumph in the USA and West Indies in June 2024 under the leadership of Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid, the Indian cricket team has been playing their own version of ‘Total T20’ in the game’s most popular and best-selling format. They managed to create an intimidation factor almost similar to what Ricky Ponting’s brilliant Australian team did in 2003 and 2007 when they won both the World Cups unbeaten. Ponting’s team also claimed two ICC Champions Trophy crowns in the same period.
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Whenever India took the field in the T20 World Cup, the opposition asked, “Where is the weakness?”. India had attacking openers, a team loaded with fearsome batting potential up to No.8 and a varied bowling line-up. Of course, South Africa found some chinks in India’s armor and defeated them in the Super-8 clash in Ahmedabad. England, too, came close to reaching a seemingly impossible target of 254 in their semi-final in Mumbai, although in the end the pressure to score proved too much.
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READ ALSO: Threemendous: T20 kings retain crownIndia have won eight bilateral T20I series on the bounce since the 2024 T20 World Cup. They have won seven series since the arrival of captain Suryakumar Yadav and head coach Gautam Gambhir. India’s last defeat in a T20I series was against the West Indies in August 2023, away from home. Nobody remembers it. Want to refresh your memory? Hardik Pandya was the Indian captain. He was supposed to be Rohit’s heir apparent after Adelaide’s 10-wicket drubbing of England in the semi-finals of the 2022 T20 World Cup.Transitions have often been thorny in the Indian cricket ecosystem, especially when the team had to move on from legends like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. However, in the T20I setup, India’s transition has been seamless.The selectors and Gambhir were quick to anoint ‘SKY’ as the T20I captain, overlooking Hardik based on poor fitness and limited availability. They told ‘SKY’ that he will be looked at purely as a T20I player and will have no further role in other formats.Next, a high-risk, high-reward batting template was set. India have aggressively started their search for personnel who can help the team post above-average scores while batting first. This approach, especially on batting-friendly surfaces, paid off as variables like throw and dew often had a cushion of huge scores. Players like Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma were provided with point security despite a string of low scores.In 13 matches after 29 June 2024, the date of the T20 World Cup final, India have been the first to post 200-plus batting runs. They scored more than 250 points five times. By abandoning the safety-focused powerplay approach, settling time has been minimized or even eliminated. The anchor role was merged and impact was prioritized over landmarks. That’s why you had Samson going for a big one on 89 in the semis and finals, perishing instead of pushing for a single and trying to get closer to the milestone. He might have wasted precious supplies in a bargain. Had he played his century, would there have been cameos by Tilak Varma and Hardik Pandya?Gambhir has publicly stated that the data is overrated. However, the former opener relies on data to organize matches and uses flexibility in batting order to achieve the target of above-average totals.Spinners started bowling in overs and certain batsmen were held back only to be released to certain types of bowlers. Designated spinners like Shivam Dube have been given a consistent role. Eight batsmen and six bowlers became the mantra as Gambhir and ‘SKY’ favored ‘multi-dimensional’ players, often blurring the line between specialists and all-rounders so that India would always bat deep. If that meant keeping strong bowlers like Arshdeep Singh and Kuldeep Yadav out of reach because of their batting inabilities, so be it. To hell with chatting on social media. The message was clear: the batting would not be compromised as it allowed the batsmen to go harder even as they lost wickets.Apart from the generational superstar of all formats like Jasprit Bumrah, ‘SKY’ and Gambhir’s ‘Mission 2026’ team, there was a classic T20 line-up with specialist players. Samson, Abhishek, ‘SKY’ himself, Tilak, Rinku Singh, Hardik, Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Arshdeep, Varun Chakravarthy. They are players who are unapologetic about wanting T20 success or basking in the riches offered by his franchise avatar. They don’t say phrases like “Test cricket is real cricket”. Nor do they express the ambition of wanting to play 100 Tests or achieve 10,000 Test runs. They are satisfied with the two-year cycle of “immortality”.Sunday’s triumph allowed India to create a new T20 dynasty, at least for the next two years, if not longer.
