I was overflowing with temper at the time of writing this piece a couple of years ago. A blundering Indian cricket team had lost its first two league matches against Pakistan and New Zealand to almost be kicked out of ICC T20 World Cup 2021 in spite of three matches remaining to be played.
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Such a feeling of wrath, however, hasn’t kicked in even more than 12 hours after India lost ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 final against Australia in Ahmedabad last night. Ten to one it won’t because of the realization that India weren’t outperformed by any team before the eventual champions lifted the World Cup for the sixth time.
That being said, the latest Indian loss unwrapped a few loopholes which had been bubble wrapped by spectacular individual and team performances in every aspect during the course of this tournament.
Tryst With Conducting Experiments Costs India 2023 Cricket World Cup
Before and after an unprecedented 10-match purple patch, a tryst with conducting experiments cost India 2023 World Cup in the night of the final. India, who weren’t subjected to the best of build-ups for this World Cup due to injuries leading to recurring chopping and changes coupled with numerous mindless experiments, somehow found impetus to make a flawed approach a reason for foundering.
Notwithstanding head coach Rahul Dravid speaking against the team taking decisions under pressure during the post-match press conference on Sunday, one fails to make sense of the rationale behind trying to fix something which was never broken in the first place.
For starters, promoting all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja to No. 6 to disrupt a well-set batting order didn’t help India’s case. Jadeja, who batted at No. 6 for the first time in almost eight years, has his worst and second-worst average and strike rate respectively at this position in this format.
Irrespective of his form, why was a designated finisher like Suryakumar Yadav demoted to No. 7 when he had an opportunity to find his feet on the back of coming in to bat before the 30th over for the first time in the competition? India not trusting a specialist batter in a crunch game raises a whole different set of questions.
The second biggest instance of India carrying out trials in a World Cup final came in the form of pacer Mohammed Shami opening the bowling alongside Jasprit Bumrah in place of Mohammed Siraj. Regardless of comparatively diminishing returns lately, Siraj was able to qualify to participate in the final due to his solid performances as India’s new-ball bowler 38 times out of his 40 ODIs until yesterday.
Shami, on the other hand, has far better numbers as a first-change bowler than when bowling with a new ball. It is noteworthy that his average and strike rate of 18.45 and 20.1 respectively in the former case puts an average of 25.80 and a strike rate of 27.6 in the latter to a shade in an outright manner.
Not that India didn’t falter in other facets of the sport at the Narendra Modi Stadium yesterday but committing mistakes on a particular day is a lot less reprehensible than rerouting from an entrenched path of success.
