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That winning feeling for India
They have hit the ground running at the T20 World Cup but India can’t rest before ensuring a semi-final spot.
How do you improve on a masterpiece? Virat Kohli channeling all his intent and skills into an authoritative innings for the ages seemed like one on Sunday. But that is also taking an individualistic perspective of the game that tends to discount, to the extent of forgetting, the contribution of the other players. The whole point is to be a better version of yourself than the last game. On that front, India still have a few chinks to iron out, more in batting than bowling. Playing cross-batted shots in seaming conditions is a worrying sign. Equally disheartening is the inability to work out a chase in singles when there is no need for big hits.
Can India be better than they were against Pakistan at the MCG on Sunday night? It wasn’t a comprehensive performance by any stretch of imagination, and probably threw up more questions than answers. Why is KL Rahul so jittery in the first few balls? Was sending Axar Patel ahead of Hardik Pandya necessary? The batting order has no sense of chronology to it, and the haphazardness is often reflected in the shots and the dismissals. There is also an acute need for game awareness from some batters. It’s a difficult balance to achieve because you don’t want to be too conservative or liberal. But it needs to be done anyway.
The biggest relief and satisfaction however is that India have started with a win. It’s a game of points. Winning all matches and topping the table should be the priority. India had to hit the ground running and they have done that, only more dramatically than anyone would have imagined. A win against Pakistan is always uplifting. But then there are wins like this, where they seemed to be going nowhere till it all came together in the last over, off the last ball. From here, the road to semi-finals looks relatively smooth. Netherlands (who India face next), South Africa, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are all teams India have beaten, often comprehensively. But India can’t afford to take their foot off the pedal.
India captain Rohit Sharma knows how it feels to keep it till the last. In the 2021 T20 World Cup, India turned it on in their last three group phase matches against Afghanistan, Scotland and Namibia but it couldn’t compensate for the ground lost in the defeats to Pakistan and New Zealand. “If you lose the first match, the way the table is set, I don’t think you can lose too many matches. You don’t get that cushion here,” said Sharma at the post-match press conference. “All matches are important. And for us, it was important to win the first match.”
A winning start always sets the tone for a campaign. England are a great example of a team who fed off the energy of demolishing South Africa in their 2019 World Cup opener, comprehensively beating them in all aspects of the game. Last year, Pakistan too were on a hot streak after beating India in the opener, till they found their match against Australia in the semi-finals. And since making the last-four is the first aim, India should make good use of this momentum. “You definitely get a lot of confidence because both are good teams,” said Sharma. “And since it’s the first match, you get a bit of relief. You can play your own game after that. If you look at the last World Cup, Pakistan beat us. They lost in the semi-final but they were looking good. You could make out that the boys were confident.”
With rain already forcing the South Africa-Zimbabwe match to be called off in Hobart, the World Cup’s group phase could be poised for a close finish if the elements continue to intervene. From that context, India need as many wins as possible. The complicated question is whether and how India can be better purely because they are trying to play a new style of cricket, something that has prompted some cricketers to undergo a complete makeover. Nothing works better than wins though. And Sharma feels that Sunday’s win helps strengthen the belief that this team can win from any situation.
“Today, after this win, from the kind of situation we salvaged, I think our confidence will get a huge boost,” he said. “We know we can win from any situation. It was important we win these kinds of matches because if you do that in a World Cup, all the 11 boys become more confident. When you take into account the circumstances, you count these wins."
