Four months after winning the T20 World Cup in Ahmedabad, where they confirmed their status as one of the sport’s greatest white-ball teams, India’s limited-overs cricket is in a curious mess.
It was bad enough that they lost a T20 series 2–0 in Ireland in late June, a result that was excused by talk of inadequate preparation, as well as captain Shreyas Iyer’s claim that the ‘Belfast ground definitely wasn’t a stadium, and the outfield was a bit slow and it wasn’t even and the dimensions were also a bit squarish’.
If an England captain had come up with such a list to explain away defeat in the subcontinent, he would have become an instant meme, been branded a ‘whingeing Pom’, and told to ‘cry more’.
Yet India followed that low with a 4–0 T20 defeat in England, who replaced them at the top of the world rankings. Perhaps most damningly, they rounded off their trip with a 2–1 defeat in the ODIs, a format in which India had begun the series at No 1 and England at No 8.
It all added up to a tour in which the powerhouses of world cricket – certainly off the field, increasingly on it – won one and lost eight. Their second-best result was the rain-ruined first T20 in Chester-le-Street, where England’s new-ball attack consisted of Luke Wood and Saqib Mahmood. It’s been a horror show.
There was some mitigation. Injury ruled the peerless Jasprit Bumrah out of the T20 series and the deciding ODI at Lord’s, where India’s four seamers went for an eye-watering 317 off 40 overs. Gurnoor Brar, who became less chatty as the series progressed, leaked 97 – by a distance India’s most expensive analysis against England.
Hardik Pandya was missing too, and at various moments before and during the tour there were injuries to Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana and Washington Sundar.
India, the powerhouses of world cricket, won one match and lost eight in their horror show of a tour of England
Bowler Gurnoor Brar went for 97 runs at Lord’s – by a distance India’s most expensive analysis against England
But one of the reasons India have built up such a white-ball aura is their bench strength, and the idea that even their second or third-string teams can beat other nations’ first XIs. On this trip, though, they couldn’t shake off the suspicion that they had self-destructed.
It was gutsy enough to drop their World Cup-winning captain Suryakumar Yadav, though at the age of 35, and with the next World Cup cycle in full flight, it was not entirely illogical. More problematic, it turned out, was the dropping of Sanju Samson, player of the tournament not long ago at the World Cup.
Head coach Gautam Gambhir had been agonising over whether to accommodate the kid wonder Vaibhav Sooryavanshi following his preternatural IPL.
When Gambhir eventually brought him in for the second T20 at Old Trafford, the move upset the team’s state of mind: if someone of Samson’s stature could be dropped three games after finishing the World Cup with scores of 97 not out off 50 balls against West Indies, 89 off 42 against England and 89 off 46 in the final against New Zealand, what security could be guaranteed for the rest?
It didn’t help when Sooryavanshi, pummelled by the short ball, fell for 14, 13 and 15, before he in turn was left out for Samson. By then, the confidence of not one player but two was in tatters. All the while, India batted with none of the verve that had helped them to an all-time-great sequence of 31 victories out of 33 in the previous four ICC global events.
Unsettled by the short ball at venues bigger than those used in the IPL, and on pitches offering more bounce, they were unsure whether to attack or defend. Their batting performance in the fourth T20 at Bristol, with the honourable exception of Iyer, was as timid as anyone could remember, their total of 158 for seven brushed aside by Harry Brook inside 14 overs.
After the game, assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate was refreshingly candid. ‘Do we want be a team that smashes 250 in India and looks great hitting 80-metre sixes at Eden Gardens or do you want to come to places like Manchester, Southampton and further down the line the MCG?’ he asked.
‘Do we want to be the team to excel in different conditions, and do we have the mentality to make those adjustments?’
Sanju Samson was harshly dropped just a few matches after his heroics in India’s T20 World Cup triumph
Teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi came in – then he too was dropped after scores of 14, 13 and 15
Then there is the question of the Impact Sub rule, which allows teams to draft in an extra batsman or bowler mid-match, and is unique to the IPL. Like most gimmicks, it has produced unintended consequences: it did away with the need to pick a balanced XI, probably including an all-rounder. And India never got their balance right, a failing that extended into the ODIs, where left-arm wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav was mysteriously ignored in favour of too many unimpressive seamers.
Much, too, was made of the destabilising effect of the Rohit Sharma saga, with reports circulating that Lord’s would be his final international appearance. But Rohit’s 138 off 110 balls suggested that his age – he will be 40 by the next one-day World Cup – is the least of India’s problems.
Clearly, it’s better to lose bilateral matches than World Cup knockouts. But in less than a year, India have lost ODI series to Australia, at home to New Zealand and now to an England side who are rebuilding their 50-over cricket almost from scratch.
Their captain, Shubman Gill, reckoned his team had enjoyed a ‘decent series’, which should ring further alarm bells. Great sides and great structures invariably find a way of bouncing back. Almost from nowhere, that is the challenge now facing India.
