India vs Ireland: India Reaping the Rewards of Resetting T20 Template Under Kohli

Dileep Premachandran |Cricketnext | Updated: June 28, 2018, 12:46 PM IST

File image of Indian Cricket Team. (AFP Image)

The seeds of India’s Twenty20 transformation were sown on the playing fields of Bangladesh and India. At the World Twenty20 in 2014, India romped to the final and were then ambushed by a canny Sri Lanka side. You didn’t need a day’s number-crunching to figure out why they had fallen short. They lacked middle-order oomph and lacked a strike bowler.

As magnificent as Virat Kohli had been, with Rohit Sharma’s sterling support, India had no one capable of muscling the ball to the boundary and beyond in the final stages of an innings. In 142 balls that they faced between them, Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni struck seven sixes. Kusal Perera, though he failed in the final, hit as many off just 83 balls.

With the ball, there was again a void that couldn’t be filled. R Ashwin and Amit Mishra were superb, while Ravindra Jadeja was an adequate foil as third spinner. Bhuvneshwar Kumar took only four wickets, but his parsimony – conceding just 5.42 an over – played a big part in the run to the final.

But there was no second pacer to call on at the death, with Mohammed Shami and Mohit Sharma both leaking runs. It was a problem that should have been fixed in the two years that followed, but by the time India hosted the event in 2016, the answer was to go back to Ashish Nehra, in the twilight of his career.

This time, India got only as far as the semifinal, before being blown away by a blizzard of West Indian big-hitting. That they had got that far was largely down to Kohli, second on the batting charts and once again a byword for incredible consistency.

The rest may as well not have turned up. Dhoni was the second-highest scorer for India, languishing in 36th spot with a mediocre 89 off 70 balls. The bowling was equally pitiful. Ashwin and Jadeja had four wickets apiece from five matches, conceding over seven an over, while Jasprit Bumrah had 4 for 153 from 20 overs.

Teams weren’t asked many questions with the new ball, and the spin threat was seen off without undue alarms in the middle overs. By the time the final overs came up, with wickets in hand, teams were primed to tee off. The ease with which West Indies chased down 193 was a chastening reminder of how far off the pace India were.

Part of the blame for the debacle lay in unimaginative selections, in a refusal to accept that Twenty20 was a different sport altogether. While other teams thrived thanks to the skills of new-age stars like Andre Russell and Carlos Brathwaite, India continued to play T20 cricket from 2007