World T20: India no favourites, don’t believe the hype; trust Rohit, he has a plan

That all-too-familiar chant has started ringing – the World T20 Cup is once again coming home, back to its spiritual abode, India. A couple of foreign experts, yet to unpack their luggage after their enriching IPL commentary trip to India, vouch that it will. Even money is being put where the mouth is – the English betting firms call India the favourite.

That old dream is being sold again and shopping carts are getting loaded. The packaging has those old visuals – Tarzan-like MS Dhoni with hair blowing in the wind. They are from the 2007 inaugural Cup in South Africa that India won. To avoid shattering of unreasonable expectations, the hidden fine print needs to be magnified.

Disclaimer: After 2007, Dhoni failed 5 times – 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016. Virat Kohli also returned empty handed and so did Rohit Sharma in the last edition at Australia. Since 2008, the year of the Indian Premier League, the Cup hasn’t come home.

Can Rohit change that this time? It wouldn’t be easy and India aren’t the favourites. A highly untested team, the present bunch in the US haven’t played together for more than a year. In the last 12 months, the T20I team has seen musical chairs with Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav and Rohit taking turns to lead the side.

Even the ‘Best 15’ that the selectors have finally zeroed in on don’t have an air of invincibility about them. The core of the team, that was in place two editions back, remains untouched. Rohit, Virat Kohli, Surya, Hardik, Bumrah or Shami, Axar or Jadeja – the country’s top bowlers and batsmen remain the team’s constants. They have been there but they haven’t done it.

IND vs BAN T20 World Cup Warm Up Match Live Streaming Details: New York: Indian cricket team captain Rohit Sharma plays football during a training session for the T20 World Cup in New York. (PTI Photo)

In the last two World T20s, there have been a couple of games – league tie against Pakistan in 2021 and the semi-final showdown with England in 2022 – when India’s modern day T20 greats, the same core, had looked awfully inadequate. India under Virat first, and Rohit later, didn’t look like a champion side. During the two 10-wickets losses, India has looked insufficient in 2021 and out-of-depth in 2022.

The Pakistan defeat could be dismissed as an off day but the humiliation at the hands of English openers Jos Buttler and Alex Hales was the kind that would push teams back to the drawing board and trigger introspection. This IPL would further underline the message that Buttler and Hales gave to the world.

SRH updated the T20 brand of cricket that was aspirational for other teams. The SRH pioneers – Travis Head and Heinrich Klaasen – are expected to continue their mayhem. It wouldn’t be surprising if Australia and South Africa would build their batting plans around them. But Rohit too has a plan.

Days after the World T20 team announcement in early May, the Indian captain had shared with the world his secret strategy. Well almost. Half-way through his reply about team combination and spinners, he said “other captains too will be listening.” He stopped. But the unfinished answer did give a drift.

The BCCI is searching for coach Rahul
Dravid’s (C) successor. (PTI)

It was about India’s belief in winning with slow bowlers on the docile West Indies pitches. Rohit said he was happy with the variety he had – chinaman Kuldeep Yadav, leggie Yuzvendra Chahal and two left-arm orthodox spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. Depending on the pitch and association, he would juggle the four to keep rivals guessing. So far so good. It isn’t that easy, there is more to winning T20 matches.

Those with skin in this World T20 need to urgently turn the clock back to 2010 – the last time West Indies hosted this tournament. It was the year the bridesmaid finally walked the aisle. Paul Collingwood’s England triumphed against all expectations. They walked away with the Cup riding on the shoulders of their crafty spinner Graeme Swann and a bunch of pacers who on that trip to Caribbean had discovered an unexpected weapon.

The story goes that one fine day during the tournament, the English think-tank sat staring at a spreadsheet that had data about the ‘lengths’ of wicket-taking balls. To their surprise, several balls that landed in the conventional middle of the pitch no-landing red zone had dismissed batsmen.

Further scrutiny showed that these were rank bad balls, the classic long hops that the pacers were embarrassed to be associated with. Thus was born the slow bouncer.

The ball would mess up the muscle memory of batsmen as they were so used to short ones that would rocket towards them. They would swing and miss, mistime or edge to a catcher. T20 had turned a rank-bad delivery into an asset and England pacers trained hard to perfect that rubbish ball. India will have to make their discoveries to catch the world by surprise.

Other than bowling variations, a successful T20 team, as proved by KKR this season, needs players with two skill sets. They need exceptional fielders and power hitters. To go all the way, India will need improvement in these areas. If they can successfully hide the likes of Chahal and Dube, they will still get away with mediocre fielding. But batsmen have no place to hide, the world isn’t sympathetic towards their failures in format tailor-made for them.

First batch of Team India has arrived in the US for the T20 World Cup. (BCCI | X)

If India doesn’t acknowledge their jumbo-sized strike rate issue, they are doomed. It’s a tricky problem since this involves the team’s Big 2 – Rohit and Kohli. Their stupendous batting record in every format, the life-long burden of carrying the team on their shoulders, the subconscious belief in their style of play has come in the way of the batting stalwarts coming to terms with the demands of T20 II.

Since the day they picked the bat, Rohit and Kohli have been told they are the team’s MVP and they need to bat responsibly. Throwing the bat around with wild abandon, that luxury is for the team’s less valuable batsmen. They were the born MVPs of their teams. In ODIs and Tests, the formats they played most of their lives, they carried their bat, they were the anchors.

As cricket changed, they now find themselves in a format where 11 batsmen get to bat for 20 overs. Here everyone is equally valuable. This was a swing and miss version where you shoot and scoot. The Travis Heads of the world hit the ants-in-the-pants mode by the end of sixth over, the first power play mark. Almost embarrassed to extend their stay as openers, they have a death wish, they take risks, go for fences. If they do survive, the game is over in the first 10 overs. If they don’t, there are too many batsmen and too few overs. But if it’s not your day, they don’t wait for luck to change. This might deny an opportunity to someone who might have woken up from the right side of the bed that morning and is sitting in the dug-out.

Rohit is capable of playing the Travis Head role, kind of. He did something similar during the 50 over World Cup. Here he needs to be more emotive, this is white ball cricket on steroids. He needs to be the same counter-attacking dazzler from November 2023 who demotivated his rivals and inspired his teammates. But India needs continuity of aggression – within a match and all through the tournament till the finals.

In T20 cricket, teams should see batting like perfectly and equally sliced bread, none broader than the next. Coaches should see it as a multi-starrer where everyone has a bit role. It’s not easy but it can be done. Don’t believe the hype, but trust Rohit. He has a plan.

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