India's new approach in the quest of old glory

In the form of IPL, India has the best T20 league in the world, they are currently at No. 2 in the ICC T20I team rankings, but still, when they play this shortest format of the game their approach seems too outdated. Where the world is full of openers like Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, David Warner, Aaron Finch, who believes in smacking the ball from the word go, India has top-order comprising Rohit, Shikhar, Virat playing almost ODI way of understanding the surface and accelerating after settling in.

Team India believes that one of the top 3 should play an anchor role throughout the innings and help others around bat freely. Let’s get the T20 match in the context of balls available, they are just 120. So, more often than not your primary hitters like Rishabh, Hardik would hardly get only 10-15 balls to make an impact, which is very less.

But this isn’t a straightforward approach India had used, rather they were somewhat forced to do so because of not having enough depth in their lower order. Earlier, India used to go with both Kuldeep and Chahal in their playing 11 which significantly reduces their chance of getting some vital runs when the condition occurs.

T20 is not like a 400-meter race where you are privileged enough to run normally at the start and then accelerate yourself, it’s more like 100 meters where running at full throttle from the start will always help you. Now India has really great resources at their disposal and this 5 match series provides an excellent opportunity to try out a few new things.

Top-order trying to steal the pages from Rishabh Pant’s book

Before the start of the series, Virat talked about being a bit more expressive in terms of approaching the innings, and playing more freely. In the first match of the series India was 22/3 after the power-play, how often we see Kohli playing aerially in the first few balls of his innings, yes yes count it using your fingers like a child does.

How ugly that hoick from Shikhar looked like, and how tame that prod from Rahul looked. All 3 were in a bit of new territory, of trying to be aggressive from the start or hitting the one over infield when you get stuck. In simpler words, trying to steal the pages from Rishabh and Hardik’s books of hitting big sixes early in the innings.

They failed miserably in their new approach, but this is the way how you grow in life. Team India doesn’t need to go too far to draw out inspiration from, their opponent has done the same thing. England reinvented how they are going to bat in ODIs after that shock exit from the 2015 World Cup. Now they have the highest ODI total registered on their name and the 2019 World Cup trophy in their cabinet. Obviously with failures every now and then, but they kept going on.

With all eyes settling on T20 World Cup, India too want to embark themselves on the same kind of journey expecting the destination as sweet as them.

~ Written by Sanket Sugoankar