Is this India’s greatest white ball era and ODI team? The results would seem to suggest that. India have won 23 of 24 matches in global tournaments, the defeat coming in the final of the 2023 World Cup. They didn’t need any help from the Board of Control for Cricket in India, but the fact that they played the final against a team that had travelled more than seven thousand kilometres, from Karachi to Rawalpindi to Dubai to Lahore and back to Dubai, will make many uncomfortable.
New Zealand had the grace not to mention the difference in treatment with their opponents who stayed in one hotel, trained in one city and played their matches at the same stadium.
Churlish
The Indian team, easily the best in the tournament, appeared more confident of winning than their cricket board did. Much of the planning seemed to revolve around the insecurities of the latter. Whatever the political compulsions (and there are good arguments here) for not playing in Pakistan, in the final analysis it was churlish not to have the Pakistan Cricket Board or Tournament Director Sumair Ahmad Syed at the presentation ceremony. It was the PCB’s tournament after all.
Perhaps the ICC Chairman, representing three crucial elements in the game — India and their ruling party being the other two — didn’t want to be photographed beside a Pakistani. It is naive to believe that sport and politics do not mix, but sport can often refine politics.
India did not miss Jasprit Bumrah, which is a huge thing. Playing in Dubai meant they could pack their team with spinners — and they have emerged as their finest quartet in the format.
There was no talk of retirement by the senior players, skipper Rohit Sharma making it a point to tell the media that such a course of action was not in his immediate plans, so please don’t speculate.
Focused
Rohit and his men showed that they do not let anything outside the game – the politics, the jingoism or the sheer noise – affect them. This ability to focus on the main thing is a boon. The skipper has the gift of laughter, and a temperament that can usually see the funny side of things.
On the field too, he was impressive. It is not easy to handle a spin quartet where each bowler is distinct and has a different role. It is not like the old pace quartet of the West Indies where skipper Clive Lloyd merely had to hand the ball to one of them in turn and wait for the edge at slip or jump out of the way of flying bails.
Spin bowling is more subtle; captaining a spin-heavy side calls for greater subtlety too. Kuldeep Yadav, wrist spinner, is a wicket-taker who works best within a larger margin of error. Axar Patel can bowl at either end of the innings; Ravindra Jadeja, the most experienced of the lot is accurate and miserly, a deadly combination. Varun Chakravarthi, the leg spinner, is an enigma as bowlers of his type tend to be at the start of their careers – apparently he guards his secrets so stubbornly that he refuses to display all his wares at the nets. The match-up — a contemporary term meaning finding the right bowler for the different batters — is in the captain’s hands.
One-day batters fall into three categories. The creators, the preservers and the destroyers. India had the ideal men in these roles — with Rohit and Shubhman Gill creating, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer in the middle, and then K L Rahul and Hardik Pandya at the end. Two of the spinners — Axar and Jadeja — had crucial batting roles too. If you were to name an ideal team, this combination would come pretty close.
Rahul might have confessed that he was “sh***ing himself” in the chase, but he and his colleagues brought to their game a calmness and control that was remarkable. Courage is not lack of fear, it is the ability to overcome fear.
By winning the Champions Trophy, India might have breathed fresh life into the one-day game whose obituaries have been written since the success of T20. The format endures, and that’s the best news from the Champions Trophy.
Published – March 12, 2025 12:33 am IST
Leave a Reply