No Jasprit Bumrah, unbeaten again: Why India's Champions Trophy win is special and one to savour
India's Champions Trophy title success had an indelible Rohit Sharma imprint. With plenty of help from the snappy, snapping Gautam Gambhir.
Played five, won five. Convincingly. That’s India’s report card from the Champions Trophy, a tournament they won for an unprecedented third time in Dubai on Sunday.
There can’t be any one title sweeter than the others – this was India’s seventh crown – because how can you play favourites when it comes to something like this? Each one is special in its own way. What makes this special is the circumstances under which it was achieved.
The Rohit Sharma-Gautam Gambhir management era had gotten off to a rocky start in Sri Lanka in August, with a 0-2 loss in a three-match One-Day International series. It went from the expected (a 2-0 defeat of Bangladesh in home Tests) to monumentally disastrous (an unparallelled 0-3 drubbing at home by New Zealand) and teetered on the edge of the precipice after a 1-3 loss to Australia in a five-Test series, towards the end of which the skipper sat himself out for the final showdown in Sydney owing to poor form.
There wasn’t much time to regroup before the Champions Trophy. India had only a three-match faceoff against England in their own backyard to finetune their strategies. And they had to do so without their talisman, their undisputed match-winner, their bowling lynchpin, the best all-format bowler in the world.
No Bumrah, no problem
It’s to Rohit and his team’s great credit that the ‘B’ word has barely surfaced over the last three weeks. How do you fill a Jasprit Bumrah-sized void? How can you fill a Jasprit Bumrah-sized void?
With smarts and intelligence, as it turns out. With belief in those that are there, not lamenting about the one who isn’t. India used the sum of their parts brilliantly to emerge as a greater, compelling, unstoppable whole. That’s why they remained unbeaten in an ICC tournament for a second time in eight and a half months, that’s why they backed up their ultimate success in the T20 World Cup in Bridgetown in June with another command performance that singles them out as the most formidable, consistent, all-conquering limited-overs outfit going.
It could so easily not have been. Ahead of the tournament, India’s bowling appeared horribly undercooked. Mohammed Shami, the pace spearhead in Bumrah’s absence, had played just two ODIs in 15 months since the 50-over World Cup final in November, following a heel surgery. Kuldeep Yadav also had just two 50-over games under his belt following surgery to fix a sports hernia issue in November. Arshdeep Singh and Harshit Rana, Shami’s fellow pace partners, were nine and three ODIs old respectively. Varun Chakravarthy, a late inclusion because India believed the pitches at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium would be slow and spin-friendly, had earned just a solitary ODI cap.
And yet, India took 47 wickets in five matches. They bowled their first four opponents out. The most runs they conceded was 264, at least 25 less than par, on a good batting surface to Australia in the semifinal. Shami rose to the occasion with nine wickets, Chakravarthy ended up with a similar number. Kuldeep atoned for an iffy tournament with a great spell in the final against New Zealand, left-arm finger spinners Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja were miserly – both going at 4.35 per over. Collectively, the bowling group was threatening without being overambitious, incisive without being profligate.
Equally importantly, India were well served by all their batters – from Nos. 1 to 7 (Jadeja was hardly required to do much). Virat Kohli was the master of the chase against Pakistan and in the semis. Before he tapered off, Shubman Gill set the tone in the first two games. Shreyas Iyer was consistently efficient – Rohit called him the ‘unsung hero’ – while Axar enjoyed the responsibility of being elevated to No. 5 and KL Rahul put the Rishabh Pant debate to bed while meeting his newest challenge, batting at No. 6, with tremendous aplomb. Hardik Pandya unleashed the booming hits under pressure while the captain, the inspirational captain, capped off an aggressive but middling run with the Player of the Final-winning 76 in the most important game of the tournament.
Rohit was selfless in going after the bowling in the Powerplay, sussing out that against spin and an ageing ball with the field spread out, strike-rotation would be difficult. He was happy to take risks, calculated but risks, nevertheless. He was willing to look ugly, which doesn’t come naturally to him, if that’s what it took to get the team off to a furious start. It was poetic justice that he shone the brightest on the biggest night of ‘em all. After all, this title success had an indelible Rohit imprint. With plenty of help from the snappy, snapping Gambhir.