Not too long ago, a visiting South African team won the Twenty20 series against India 2-0, and it started a debate whether India has it in them to be a world champions again.
Questions were raised about the ordinary death bowling, declining ability of skipper MS Dhoni to finish off the game and the inability to find perfect combination of 11 players.
The main problem India faced was finding good bowlers who could take wickets and control the runs at the death. They tried many options like Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Mohit Sharma, Axar Patel, S Aravind, but none of them were able to control the flow of runs scored by South Africa batsmen during last stage of the innings.
Such was an impact of this loss at home that Indian selectors had to recall the veterans Ashish Nehra, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh in the mix along with two newcomers in Jaspreet Bumrah and Hardik Pandya.
With a combination of new and old horses, India faced Australia in Australia for one day and T20 series, and although India lost the one day leg, they bounced back
brilliantly to whitewash the Aussies 3-0 in their own backyard.
India won all three games in a controlled manner, and the Australian side (short of first choice players like Warner, Smith) had no answers.
The Indian openers gave them a quick start, followed by the man in the form of his life Virat Kohli taking game out of Australia’s hands by scoring quickfire half centuries.
In the bowling department, Nehra showed excellent control in line and length, while the newcomer Bumrah showed excellent control by bowling yorkers at tail enders. Pandya, too, came in handy with his part-time medium pace which gave Dhoni a good relief to rotate his bowlers to get productive results.
All in all, it was a perfect series for India to test all possible combination of playing eleven before the big ticket tournament. Moreover, they got another good opportunity to test all the players in Asia cup played in Bangladesh which helped Dhoni to stamp the playing eleven line-up for the World Cup.
Shikhar Dhawan showed good form along with the ever-dependable Virat Kohli who played excellent anchoring innings. Yuvraj Singh didn’t disappoint with his batting and proved that he is still a force to reckon and will be vital link for India to win the World Cup.
Nehra, Bumrah, Ashwin and Pandya showed great form with the ball and didn’t allow any of the opposition to dominate, taking wickets regularly to peg back pressure on batsmen. It was a flawless tournament for India and they deservedly won the Asia cup for the record sixth time.
Such has been a dominance shown by India that they look absolute favourites to win the World Cup taking place in India, and who better than the India players, who know the pitch and conditions of the stadium inside out.
Most of the players in playing 11 have been playing consistently well in IPL for respective teams since last eight years. When India takes field in the ICC World T20, these players will be full of confidence about their role, form and match situations and how to handle them and that is the reason. I believe India will be the team
to beat in this tournament.
It is going to be very tough for other teams like New Zealand, Pakistan and Australia to face India at their own backyard considering India has the most settled batting line-up, a strong middle order, perfect bowling combination of spin and pace and I am sure team India will be raring to go and continue to perform where they left off their performance in Asia cup.
Unless a team apart from India shows tremendous fight, calm and perfect game plan to counter the Indian force, I don’t see another team than India lifting world T20 cup for a second time.
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