Opinion
The T20 season has several lessons for the India side. Here’s what they should take out of it for the coming internationals.
Rohit Sharma, while discussing Mumbai Indians’ performance, said that there is no longer a space for anchor batters in a T20 team.
The statement from the Indian captain came as music to many Indian T20 cricket followers, who were left frustrated by the Indian team’s conservative batting approach in the World T20 and the Asia cup in 2022.
A quick look at the Chennai SuperKing’s scorecard in the finals will reveal the modern template of T20 scoring; 26, 47, 32, 27,19,0 and 15 are the scores of the batters.
Nobody made a big 100 or a 50; they did not even try to play long. All of them, except Dhoni, made these runs at 150+ strike rates and three at 200+ strike rates. One can see this pattern in many of the games in this IPL 2023. Teams made 200+ runs regularly, many times without big 50s or 100.
Ironically, teams that scored runs with one big hundred dominating the innings found themselves on the losing side.
The above fact, optimal use of all the batting resources, has been apparent to many of the T20 cricket pundits and the think tank of teams like England.
However, the Indian management was stuck in the old-school thinking of anchoring at the top and saving wickets for a late flourish, i.e. the fifty-over model. Thus the statement by Rohit, a vital member of the Indian thinktank, holds significant value.
18.5 and 18.6 are deliveries that are part of India’s T20 folklore. Those were two magical strokes from the bat of a genius against a fast bowler of the highest calibre. 19.1 and 19.2 from the Gujarat Titan’s innings in the finals of IPL 2023 will not be remembered by many, even a day after the finals.
However, Sai Sudarsan will remember those two shots of extremely high quality that he played, and so will some cricket aficionados. Sai averaged 51 @ 141 to provide solid starts alongside Shubman Gill for Gujarat
A little earlier in the tournament, when Jofra Archer banged a quick ball short, targeting the chest of young Yasasvi Jaiswal, he wouldn’t have expected the ball to go 94 metres off the blade of the youngster.
Young Jaiswal followed that shot with plenty more eye-catching strokes to make a 100 against the Mumbai Indians. He also made IPL’s fastest fifty against the Kolkatta Knight Riders. Jaiswal averaged 48 @ 164 sending the Royals off to big totals.
While T20 batting is about bludgeoning the ball to all corners, here is Ruturaj, who caresses it to the boundary. He leans and times the ball racing towards the cover boundary or helps the ball to the deep square leg or fine leg boundary.
Gaikwad’s classical batting at modern high strike rates was as smooth as a Royal Enfield motorbike cruising on the expressways, classical yet contemporary.
Vivian Richards is rumoured to have told an English captain at the toss that West Indies would win no matter what team England plays.
In this IPL, no matter which spinner a captain threw at him, Shivam Dube just hit them out of the park.
Dube used his long levers to get underneath the ball and deposit it across the boundary line with a sweet sound. After being discarded by his earlier franchises, Shivam found a safe home in Chennai and flourished as his team’s much-needed middle-overs basher. Dube scored 411 runs, averaging 37 @ 160.
While India has been looking at Rishabh Pant to crack the wicket keeper- batter role in T20, another contender for this position emerged from the Punjab Kings team; Jitesh Sharma.
After a good show in 2022, Jitesh scored quick middle-order runs for his team averaging 24 @ 160. Jitesh’s scores in this IPL are typical of what the modern game needs; hit out or get out, quick runs at 150+ strike rate.
How often have you seen a player hit five consecutive sixers in the last over of the match to win a game for his team? Rinku Singh did this against the 2022 champions, Gujarat Titans, in a league game in IPL 2023. It was not a one-off performance either. Rinku averaged 59 @ 150 in IPL 2023 and 34 @ 148 in IPL 2022.
Over the last two years, Mumbai Indians have come to depend on this young player, Tilak Verma, to score runs in the middle order and help the team win games or make match-winning totTilak averaged 42 @ 164, the ideal middle-order batter in T20s. Tilak combined with Tim David, Surya Kumar Yadav and others in the Mumbai middle order to script some fabulous wins like those against Punjab and RajasT20s.
(Photo by Tharaka Basnayaka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Last but not least, a young man was unofficially crowned the “Prince of Indian batting” during the IPL 2023. Shubman Gill lit up the tournament with his elegance, power and will to score big runs. Gill scored 890 runs in the tournament, averaging 59 @ 157. Every statistic in that sentence shouts brilliance.
Until Dhoni whipped the bails off, Shubam Gill toyed with CSK’s bowlers, placing his shots on a whim. Gill’s hundreds against Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians in the final stages of the tournament were of such high quality that the cricketing world anointed him the successor to the batting legacy of Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar and Virat Kohli.
For the WT20 in 2024, one will hope that many of the above players will find a place in the Indian team.
What must be worrying the Indian camp is that few young Indian bowlers caught the attention during this IPL.
Suyash Sharma’s performances for KKR stood out among the young Indian bowlers this IPL. Mohit Sharma’s return to T20 cricket might find him among the mix for the role of Harshal Patel. What must be even more worrying is the long list of Indian bowlers still in the infirmary.
Without a solid bunch of bowling allrounders and bowlers, India will struggle to win a World cup and waste the emerging firepower on the batting side.
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