SKY’s the limit, as a new era dawns in men’s cricket
Compare the T20 World Cups of 2007, 2016 and 2024 with the upcoming one, and the shift in culture seems almost tectonic.
Indian cricket is rarely static, but the shakeup within the team, ahead of the T20 World Cup, feels transformative as well as edgy.
The expectations are massive: the team must defend a well-earned supremacy on home soil in less than two months, while reframing its identity with a new generation of players, an upgraded philosophy, and a higher tolerance for calculated risk.
Compare the T20 World Cups of 2007, 2016 and 2024 with the upcoming one, and the shift in culture seems almost tectonic.
The most visible marker of it has been the team’s rapid transformation following the retirements of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja. Their way of cricket was powerful and entertaining but still relatively old-school, their batting largely hinging on scoring according to the situation. T20 cricket, meanwhile, has evolved into a format that rewards explosive intent over prudence, flexibility over a particular order.
Having treaded a more conventional path for nearly two decades, India has decided to explore this exciting unknown. And this is the ideal team to do it. The core is decidedly younger and more fearless. Commitment to the collective cause is high; there is less focus on individual achievement.
Suryakumar Yadav’s appointment as captain is symbolic of this change. A good-natured but street-smart leader who doesn’t shy away from unconventional play, he is clearly keen to be a part of the process rather than the face of it. His batting has hit a rough patch of late but there is no denying the skillset that can dismantle bowling plans with a range of imaginative and effective shots.
Batting sits at the heart of the ongoing transition.
Under several captains before Yadav, there have been sporadic attempts to move away from the brand of cricket that focuses on preserving wickets and maximising the slog overs. With head coach Gautam Gambhir now throwing out the rulebook, India have emerged as a side completely unshackled from that mindset. No particular order is the only order now, meaning that on any given day Tilak Varma can bat at No 7 and Axar Patel at No 4. Scenarios, not statistics, dictate how India bat these days. Impact-based selection, matchup awareness and bowling versatility over traditional metrics are contributing to this overhaul.
The face of this change could be said to be Abhishek Sharma, whose batting has been nothing short of exhilarating. His unfettered approach has seen him score at a strike rate of nearly 190 since his debut in Zimbabwe, just a week after India won the last T20 World Cup, in Barbados. This powerplay disruptor is not expected to bat deep, making it an easy trade-off for invaluable early momentum. The idea is that this will allow India to score big and do it quickly. Whether Shubman Gill, floated as Sharma’s partner to anchor the batting, is the right choice remains to be seen.
For now, the biggest upgrade overall has been the way in which the batting order has been reimagined as a zone of acceleration rather than consolidation. Varma, Patel and Shivam Dube have been used as enforcers at different junctures. Hardik Pandya and how he is used will be key. He can be a middle-order anchor if India lose early wickets, or a new-ball bowler on pitches India want to go in on with three spinners, and he remains an all-round matchwinner (evident in the way he removed David Miller, first ball of his over, after slamming a 28-ball 59 in the Cuttack T20I).
India’s hunt for replacements and backups for Pandya have led them to tap many all-round options, Nitish Kumar Reddy being the most recent. As long as Pandya remains fit, India may not have to fret too much on that front, for now.
The bowling has been left more or less untouched because it didn’t really warrant a makeover. Opening the powerplay and closing out the death overs consistently, Jasprit Bumrah’s versatility lends a strong foundation. Meanwhile, Arshdeep Singh’s growth has been most impressive, into a player who isn’t afraid to pitch the ball up, even if he does leak runs.
Driving India’s bowling edge is the venerated spin attack of Patel, Kuldeep Yadav and Varun Chakravarthy. Patel and Chakravarthy lend control through their precision and tight lines, while Kuldeep provides the aggressive wrist spin that doesn’t hesitate to take on batters even when it’s being targeted, a necessary evolution in an era of impact players and flat pitches. All of which forms part of the high-risk approach India have adopted. Will the rewards include winning the T20 World Cup, while reshaping the future of the format?
