If my previous article was any indication, India has many talented players. They currently sit comfortably at the top of the ICC rankings in Test Cricket, and 2nd in the ODI rankings list. India has been dominant in most of it’s bilateral encounters, both home and away. Ever since the completion of the 2015 World Cup, so many capable youngsters have emerged, who have added a lot to the overall strength of the team. Under captain Virat Kohli, Team India has won a lot of matches, many of them quite convincingly. This team, from the outside, looks like it is a huge global force that takes a lot to beat.
Sadly, this team has no multi-lateral trophy to show for it’s quality. The numbers indicate that they have had an amazing win record since Kohli took over (62 wins from 81 games, 71.83% matches won). So it is a source of immense surprise to the cricketing world (and immense agony for Indian cricket fans!) that this team has failed to win anything. They have reached the final or semi-final in all ICC trophies since their 2013 Champions Trophy victory, but have failed to win any of them.
I felt it necessary to analyse Team India’s performances, more specifically, their 2019 World Cup campaign. It is particularly amazing how many elements are required to create a winning formula in this sport, because India lacked a lot of things that goes into making a team capable of making history. Here are the things that went wrong, or were handled with the wrong approach. Feel free to think about whether any of this makes sense!
Before I begin, I would like to remind everybody about India’s strategy during the years leading up to the World Cup. India were one of the most unchanged teams throughout the many bilateral ODI series that they played. They believed that they had found the winning formula that would deliver them another World Cup. What they failed to think about were back-up options. India had a lot of talented players at their disposal, but very few had the big-match experience required to deliver on cricket’s biggest stage. Hence, when one half of their reliable opening pair, Shikhar Dhawan, was ruled out of the tournament early on, the team was put into a major amount of disarray, which they couldn’t quite recover from.
The middle order of the team was another big headache for the management, and quite frankly, the problem was of their own creation. The root cause of the issue remains the lack of experimentation. After Dhawan’s injury, K.L Rahul was pushed into the opening spot, something he had no prior experience with, especially in big matches. That left a gap in the No.4 spot that was never properly filled. Vijay Shankar and Rishabh Pant were both bought in to play in that spot, but neither could deliver good performances. They cannot be blamed. They both are novices in international cricket, with no prior experience on how to deal with such a situation. Another injury, this time to Vijay Shankar, caused more chaos amongst the group, and the team went into overdrive to try and fix those mistakes. This ended up becoming an experimentation that should have been done beforehand, with nobody beyond Virat Kohli having any idea about where or when they would be bought on to play.
These look like too many problems, but I would not like to call it “problems”. The word I prefer is “symptoms”, since these are merely symptoms of a much larger problem, one that the Indian dressing room has yet to find the answer to. The problem originates with none other than India’s captain, Virat Kohli. Now you might be wondering about the meaning behind what I just said. To clarify, Kohli the batsman is not the issue. His performances in the World Cup were not upto his magnanimous standards, but we’re good nonetheless. I am talking about his captaincy. Virat Kohli as a captain has failed India. If you want to understand my statement, I will gladly explain.
Let me take you down the memory lane. Let us look at the 3 best ODI captains of the modern era. We have Sourav Ganguly, M.S Dhoni and Virat Kohli. If you analyse win records, Virat is the winner by a fair margin. I mean, he has a win percentage of 71.83, having played a total of 89 ODIs to date. In comparison, Ganguly has a win percentage of 53.90 in 146 games, and Dhoni has a win percentage of 59.52 in 200 games as captain. Kohli has the numbers to show for it, but the other two have ICC trophies and monumental victories to glitter their captaincy stint.
If we dive into each of their approaches personally, I would say that Ganguly had the best TEAM amongst the 3 captains. The team I am referring to is not the strength of individual players, because Kohli has more talented and variety cricketers at his disposal than either of the other two. I am talking about team mentality and team spirit. As a unit, nothing could match the team that Ganguly constructed. Dhoni is the smartest captain amongst the lot. His on-field decisions and quick thinking is stuff for legend. Couple that with a relatively strong team, and he gave Indian fans their most trophy-laden period. The problem with Kohli is that although he has a fantastic roster, he failed to build a strong team. This is simply because he was never looking to build one. He didn’t emphasise on creating a strong team, and that is the most pressing issue that this side is facing.
Kohli’s captaincy was more reliant on taking it one match at a time. None of the management thought ahead, unlike the other teams in the World Cup. You are ideally expected to begin formulating your World Cup team at least 3 years prior to the competition. Kohli was hungry for success, but not the one that would ultimately count. He was hungry for series victories and ICC rankings. He was so busy fighting battles, that he never stopped to think about preparing for the war. His team building was solely done with the agenda of winning every duel as and when it’s played, and nothing else. He was hell-bent on playing the most in-form 11 so that there is no risk of losing any match in a series. He never put emphasis on rotating players to give them all experience, nor did he trust his players to deliver match-winning performances.
His lack of trust in players was very evident throughout the World Cup. Take the example of Ambati Rayudu. He was groomed to take the No.4 spot in the batting line-up for nearly 2 years leading up to the World Cup. But at the final moment, he wasn’t considered in the final squad. They suddenly felt like Vijay Shankar was a better choice for the side. A bad run of form cost Rayudu his position in the side. Even after Dhawan’s injury, the team bought in Rishabh Pant. Pant is a talented cricketer, but he was too raw and inexperienced to be fielded in a World Cup match. His batting style is characterised by brute hitting, playing quick-fire cameos and throwing away his wicket too early. Rayudu was rightfully fed up with the management, and decided to retire from the game.
Even the players who were picked were not treated how they should have been. K.L Rahul, back in the side after a controversy that saw him being banned from cricket for a while, was thrust into the opening position without any prior experience playing there. For somebody who was mentally prepared for one role for the whole campaign, to be given a completely different responsibility, Rahul wasn’t given the proper support or consideration required to deliver good performances. It was evident that he was playing with the sole purpose of justifying his position in the side, like he had a gun pointed to his head. We never got to see his free-flow, natural style of batting since he switched roles. We saw a man devoid of confidence, struggling to lift the heavy burden he was not prepared to handle. Captain Kohli’s mistakes don’t stop there. Hardik Pandya, who is an extremely capable batsman, was never given a fixed position in the batting order. Throughout the tournament, he was shuffled around according to Kohli’s will. He wasn’t given any stability and so he couldn’t settle down. Kedar Jadhav was also somebody who was a regular in the side. After just one loss to England, he was completely out of the picture, reducing the bowling options to just 5. The spin combination of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal were key to the Indian middle-over bowling. But one bad match against England, and Kohli broke the combination, opting to go for Ravindra Jadeja, who hadn’t played a single game in the competition up until that point. Dinesh Karthik was another person who was never made aware of a proper batting position. He was picked as a No.7 batsman, but was promoted to No.5 during the semi-final game, in a tense situation, having played just one inning before that.
This entire fiasco looks like India doesn’t have players capable enough to address these issues. That is a lie if there ever was one. The Indian Cricket Team has more than enough players who are capable of filling in these gaps. The problem lies with our captain. Kohli never seems to trust these players to perform. Talent is one thing, but nobody can replace the faith that a young, inexperienced talent needs. The captain should be a guardian for the players and he should be in a position to back them up even if the world is against them. Kohli loses faith in players even before the world wrote them off. This is where Ganguly and Dhoni excelled as captains. Ganguly trusted Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni, Mohammed Kaif and many other talented cricketers. That’s why they have gone on to become as successful as they are. Dhoni himself trusted the likes of Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma and even Virat Kohli. The two of them backed players even at their worst, and never made them feel like they are under pressure to perform every time they walk onto the pitch. This is what led to the formation of strong teams. The success-hungry Kohli could never replicate that emotion. He was so obsessed with winning every match that he didn’t place any trust on budding cricketers. This is what had him starving for options in the middle of the flagship tournament. He had so many talented players, but he failed to make a strong team out of them. The Indian team’s middle order wasn’t just weak, that concept was just non-existent.
Needless to say, the campaign ended on a sour note, and left us all with more questions than answers. One thing is for certain. We should either change our captain, or have faith that he will change his approach. Since this article was written in the spirit of building a strong team, I would definitely prefer option 2. I sincerely hope that Kohli has figured out the issues surrounding the team, and will do the needful to fix the same. With Sourav Ganguly at the helm, as BCCI president, it all points towards better things to come. The impending retirement of “Captain Cool” Dhoni threatens to further worsen the situation, but I believe in this unit and I believe it is capable of learning from this campaign rather than dwell on it. We have everything required to excel on the big stage and we will bounce back well enough to prove it. Jai hind!
Cricket Unlimited 