T20 World Cup: Indian team sends confusing signals – BBC News

Ranked No. 1, India enters the ninth T20 World Cup 2024 as favorites.

The tournament, which will take place in the United States and the West Indies over the next four weeks, sees India facing high expectations and intense scrutiny from fans and pundits.

After overcoming tough odds to win the inaugural World Cup in 2007, India has failed to repeat that triumph since. Despite growing wealth, influence and talent, major cricket titles have remained woefully out of reach for Indian cricket.

In fact, India have not won an International Cricket Council (ICC) title since the 2013 Champions Trophy. Three stellar captains – MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma – and two renowned head coaches – Ravi Shastri and Rahul Dravid – have, in different combinations, performed otherwise excellently, but failed this test. Last year, India lost in the finals of the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup, both times to Australia.

Can India break the curse this time?

Since its inception in 2008, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has been the flagship tournament to gauge form and influence Indian team selection for T20, sometimes even for 50-over ODI World Cups.

The intense competition of the IPL and the pressure tests the caliber and temperament of the players. However, India’s World Cup squad based on IPL 2024 is sending confusing signals.

For example, no player from the team appeared in the IPL final.

Rinku Singh, who played for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), is part of the traveling reserves and not the 15-strong main squad. Shubman Gill, touted as the next “Big Thing” of Indian cricket for the past two years, also finds himself relegated. to reserves.

The top scorers of IPL 2024 after Virat Kohli – Ruturaj Gaikwad and Riyan Parag – are not even in the reserves. Notably, Gaikwad captained India at the Asian Games last year.

Harshal Patel and Varun Chakravarthy, leading wicket-takers in the recent IPL and part of India’s 2022 T20 World Cup squad, were overlooked.

The inclusion of several players based on their IPL 2024 form, along with notable omissions, raises red flags against conventional selection logic.

India’s best performers were Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah.

Criticism of Kohli’s strike rate peaked midway through the tournament, but he silenced the doubters with some superlative batting. As a leading run-getter, he reaffirmed his status as the best all-format batsman in the world.

Although Bumrah did not take the most number of wickets (finishing third), he was nevertheless the most feared. Surprisingly economical, conceding less than seven runs per over, Bumrah’s superb skills and ability to take wickets at any time made him a considerable influence, even as his franchise finished last. With his success in last year’s ODI World Cup and an excellent Test series against England, Bumrah is unrivaled among contemporary fast bowlers.

The only other player in this team that I see in the same category as Kohli and Bumrah is Rishabh Pant.

Not for his statistical achievements in IPL 2024, but for his remarkable and strong return to big-time cricket after a near-fatal injury that had kept him out of the game for almost 18 months. Pant’s free-spirited, dazzling and innovative batting, which won many matches for India, re-emerged, promising for the World Cup. A notch below is the hard-hitting Shivam Dube who underwent a breakthrough IPL that caught the attention of the selectors.

From there, the Indian team’s weight began to decline.

Sanju Samson, Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal (who are making a comeback) performed well in IPL 2024, although not exceptional.

Among the others, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, along with left-arm spinner Arshdeep Singh have had only mixed success. Mohammed Siraj, Bumrah’s main backer, was mostly trailing behind.

But with three left-arm spinners and a shaky pace contingent (with debutants Khaleel Ahmed and Avesh Khan in the reserves), the bowling attack, at least on paper, appears to lack variety and edge.

The main concern is the poor IPL form of captain Rohit Sharma and deputy Hardik Pandya. Their involvement in a captaincy transition controversy at Mumbai Indians raised doubts, affecting team cohesion.

Rohit’s destructive batting as an opener is vital to India’s success, as evidenced in the ODI World Cup. Equally crucial is Pandya’s all-round prowess as a finisher, pace bowler and good fielder. Without Pandya at his best, the balance of the team is compromised.

Be careful, the Indian selectors have largely succeeded in ticking all the boxes, covering most eventualities.

The wealth of talent in Indian cricket makes this possible, despite many star players being in questionable form.

The IPL serves as a testing ground for Indian players and a crucible for the best T20 talent in the world (excluding Pakistan). The Indian team will come across several players who have sizzled this IPL season and are ready to excel for their respective national teams.

The main contenders for the title include reigning champions England, two-time champions West Indies (with home-field advantage) and Australia, who have displayed a relentless quest for victory over the past year.

In the previous eight editions of the World Cup, six different countries have become champions, including Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This highlights that reputation is of little importance in this format.

Valiant teams like Afghanistan, as they showed in the ODI World Cup, can easily upset more experienced teams in white-ball cricket. Predicting the winner of this World Cup would not only be risky, but downright foolish. All teams must perform at their peak.

India is placed in the same group with Pakistan in the championship phase. The June 9 match between these two great rivals is being billed as the “biggest” in cricket history and is expected to attract more than two billion viewers worldwide.

Neither team wants to lose. But India, who have had the upper hand in such exchanges in ICC tournaments (ODI and T20) over the years, must aim beyond just winning this contest. Beating Pakistan will only be a stepping stone; true redemption lies in winning the World Cup.