World Cups and Heart Aches - A un-ending love story

 We are all cricket experts in our own right. Armchair critics to speak. We have a billion opinions on everything, even though our skillsets may warrant at best a selection to our local gully cricket team. So yes this is another ‘opinion’ which needs to be taken with dollops of salt. While I am still grieving over the debacle on the 19th, I thought the best way to get over it, was perhaps to pen my thoughts.

I would be the first to admit, that before the World Cup, I gave our team no chance. I knew we were going to be quite a handful in our backyard and we had the talent to make it to the Semis, but I wasn’t very happy about the whole chopping and changing that was happening over the past few months and we had our middle-order (KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer) out injured. It felt like deja-vu that we were going into yet another World Cup not having the right middle order.

All that changed during the Asia Cup. Shreyas and KL made superb comebacks and played well. What was impressive was that, while it felt they were being blooded straight from rehab, the way the two performed, it appeared, they were ironing out their wrinkles and they weren’t hurried into the playing 11. Still, even the most optimistic fan out there, wouldn’t have predicted a 10-0 white-wash leading to the Final. Granted, our winning the Asia Cup did give us some hope, but it still didn’t kind of give us the confidence that this team was going to win 10-0. At least it didn’t for me. I upgraded our chances of making the Semis from a may-be to a definitely.

The start

For me at any tournament, Australia is the team to beat. Doesn’t matter what else is happening, they always turn up. I am always a bundle of nerves when it comes to the Indian top order against left-arm pacers and my worst fears came true when India lost 3 wickets by the 2nd over with just 2 runs on board. But then the ever-dependable Virat Kohli and KL steadied things and in the end, we won quite easily. This was a good win, a sign that our middle order can handle a collapse, can handle a day of 20 minutes of bad cricket (or was it?). To me, any team that wins the World Cup needs to have a well-rounded bowling attack and we didn’t have one yet. Modern cricket expects batsmen to bowl and bowlers to bat and while this is great if we have all-rounders like the Australian team or even the Indian Team of 2011 possessed, you just can’t wish it to happen. Our top-order batsmen, can’t bowl and our bowlers can’t hang enough with the bat. This conundrum gave rise to Shardul Thakur. In the past, we have experimented with Vijay Shankar, Shivam Dubey, and Venkatesh Iyer. While they are all good cricketers, they are at best, to borrow a term from our cricketer-turned-commentator Sanjay Manjrekar, bits and pieces cricketers. So in the pursuit of a shorter tail, we were compromising on a quality bowler.

Blessing in Disguise?

As expected we made light work of Afghanistan and Pakistan (this flattered to deceive), and in the game against Bangladesh, we lost our only medium-pace allrounder in Hardik Pandya. Now Hardik Pandya is someone who is not only an allrounder, but he can get selected into the team on pure batting skills. His bowling when on song is quite something, plus he is a big game player. And he can tonk the ball into the stands on demand, Maxwelesque. While the Bengal Tigers were never in a position to take advantage of this injury, this made our team selection interesting against New Zealand, a team that had won all its games so far. This in my opinion was the turning point of India the bowling team, the injury to Hardik and the fact that Shardul was being under-bowled, meant Mohammad Shami came into the team. This meant we had to get another pure batsman into the playing 11 and that made room for Suryakumar Yadav. This makes perfect sense as our top order was Rohit, Gill, and Kohli, and the middle order was Rahul and Ishan. The lower order was SKY and Jadeja. We had 7 batting options and 5 bowling options. Shami hit the ground running and there was no looking back from there on. We had found our mojo and our best playing 11. This is the same 11 that played all the games hereafter. 

The Stage

This was our best chance of winning the World Cup since 2011. Even in 2011, I don’t think we were this dominant. Yes, we had God opening the batting, we had the super strategist Dhoni as the captain and he had bowlers he could deploy in Sachin, Sehwag, Yuvi, and Raina apart from the regular bowlers, but this team was more dominant. We had to win this, of course, we are going to win this.

Our strategy was on par so far in the tournament, Rohit races off to a flying start and he continues scoring briskly, taking risks unless wickets have been falling around him. Gill plays the perfect foil, rotates strike, and puts the bad balls away. King comes at number 3 and plays the anchor role. Gill, KL, and Iyer play more flamboyant innings around him and we get to good scores then Bumrah and Siraj set the stage with a great opening spell, and Shami almost always strikes and picks up wickets. Jadeja and Kuldeep keep the pressure on. To be fair, we were head and shoulders above any opponent. The only time we panicked a bit was in the Semi-finals, which also didn’t last too long, before our bowling came together once more and we extinguished any hopes Kiwis were having of repeating their 2019 feat.

The Venue:

Ahmedabad was always going to be the venue that hosts the finals. It has the biggest baddest and grandest stadium out there which could host a tournament finale. The pitch there has always been a little questionable and aided teams that batted second. Incidentally, the only team that won at Ahmedabad batting first was Australia. The highest score in Ahmedabad batting first was 286 (also by Australia). Teams batting second were helped due to the dew factor. One it made the job of spinners difficult, two it made the ball skid onto the bat, thereby making stroke-making a little easier as compared to batting first.

The Toss:

Given the venue and the history, the prudent decision was to bat second, which is what Australia did.

Here is the first questionable strategy – Rohit when asked at the toss, said he would have batted first as well. Big game, putting a score, additional pressure, and all that. Perhaps the demons of 2003 were still there, where we won the toss and asked Australia to bat and they batted us out of the game. Now one may argue that it was just mind games from Rohit and we would have chased as well, if we won the toss. But since I am not a mind-reader, am going to go by the data I have and I am going to assume that India would have batted first. So the toss wasn’t the deciding factor in the finale. It was our displaced belief or misreading of the pitch.

The Start:

The way Rohit started, it did feel like Pat Cummins had indeed made the wrong call in sending India in. Though we lost Gill to a poor shot, Kohli didn’t take much time to settle in and Rohit was striking the ball sweetly and we quickly raced to 70 odd runs.

This is where the second questionable decision came and if you ask me, this was the turning point of the game. Australia had only 4 bowlers, which meant Cummins not only needed his bowlers to fire, but he also needed to get 10 overs from the combination of Maxwell, Head, and Mitch Marsh. Starc and Hazlewood are taken to the cleaners by Rohit, so Cummins brings Maxwell on. Rohit wants to take the game to the Aussies and gets a 4 and a 6 in the first 3 balls of Maxwell’s over. Now this is the last over of the powerplay, maybe that got to him, or maybe he took one risk too many, he danced down and went for almighty hoick, lost shape, and spooned the ball. Travis Head ran as if his life depended on it and took a great catch. The catch in itself was superb, but if you add the circumstances of the final, and the fact that it was Rohit Sharma, the catch had the effect of 10 catches. They say catches win matches and if you ask me, this was the catch that won Australia the World Cup.

Now, don't get me wrong, this was Rohit’s template, he mostly got out in his 40s which he raced to very quickly and he set the platform for Kohli and Gill, or Kohli and Iyer, or Kohli and Rahul to consolidate and more often than not, they took their time to get their eye in and one of them went on to make a century. This was the script throughout the World Cup. So one might ask, why is this such a big turning point?

One – Gill was already out.

Two – Iyer has his frailties against short-pitch bowling

Three – The pitch was going to go further slow (misread the pitch)

Four – If we lose Iyer or Kohli quickly, then KL Rahul will have to bat more conservatively as he wouldn’t want SKY to come in by the 20-25th over.

While you are reading this, and as I type, this was my biggest fear. SKY is a great T20 batsman, but I was never convinced of SKY, the ODI player. His start in ODI Cricket was uneventful. Again am not using my 20-20 hindsight to say this, but in the playing 11, if there was a weak link it was always SKY for me. The problem was the other option we had was Ishan Kishan and he hadn’t set the stage on fire either. I digress, the problem was, that SKY is great at hitting the ball in weird areas mostly over the wicketkeeper's head. He is a modern-day T20 specialist, they thrive on pitches where the ball comes onto the bat. The ball is only 20 overs old (at max), they swing through the line or use the pace and score runs at will. He wasn’t a grafter. Now and then in ODI cricket you need a grafter. You need someone who can come to the crease at 20/5 and then steady the ship and then tonk the ball 35 overs or later and take your team to a respectable total. SKY wasn’t that batsman and if you think am being super critical of him, then am not alone. The way KL Rahul and Virat batted showed that even they didn’t trust SKY to steady the ship if they lost their wicket. Even the team management chose to send Jadeja when Virat lost his wicket, so this all goes on to prove my point that SKY was suited to come in at the 35th over or beyond and then take the score from 200 to a 350.

Having lost Iyer, Kohli and KL Rahul went into super conservative mode. The start from Rohit kind of helped them to still stay at run a ball till the 20th over, but after that, it became painfully evident that the pitch was getting difficult to bat on. KL even struggled to rotate the strike. At this juncture we must appreciate the tactical genius of Pat Cummins, he rotated his bowlers very efficiently and used his 5th bowling combination without conceding many runs or advantage. Even at this stage, with KL and Virat there, it felt like, they had read the wicket and understood that this may not be a 325-350 wicket but more of a 280-300 wicket and they felt if they could stay on till the 35th over, then one of them could then take over and we had SKY and Jadeja who could then help to move the scoring along.

When it's not your day, it's just not your day, right when it looked like Virat and KL would accelerate, Kohli lost his wicket. Then a few overs later we lost KL Rahul. SKY struggled to bat with the ball just not coming on to the bat and the Australian bowlers made sure he just didn’t get the pace. The field setting and the fielding were on a different level altogether. The tail actually wagged more than we had given them credit for and India ended up with 240.

Now during our league game against England, we had scored just 229 and our bowlers came to the party and we won by 100 runs. I know this Australian team is head and shoulders better than the current English team, but India was down but not out yet.

I had great faith in our bowlers, and Australia’s top order had two left-handers and I was sure Shami would feast on them. We started strong and maybe would have gotten a wicket off the first ball, but instead, the ball went in between Kohli at first slip and Gill at second slip. The swing Bumrah was generating was crazy and though the first over did go for runs, there was hope.

Then came the third strategic error from Rohit/India. Remember the left-handers Australia had in their top order and how Shami was superb against the left-handers all through the tournament, well guess what Rohit knew that stat too, he gave the new ball to Shami. This resulted in two things, while the first no one could predict, which was Shami was all over the place with the swing, the second one was quite predictable. Siraj is a bowler who thrives when the ball is moving around. He can get the ball to swing and do his bidding. He is also lethal when he has the confidence going. Having been taken to the cleaners in the Semis his confidence was already low and when he was not given the new ball in the finals, it meant, he was taken out of the game for all practical purposes. He ended up bowling 5th and wasn’t effective at all. Well, some of you may say it's hindsight and it certainly looked like Rohit did the right thing when Shami struck the second ball (first legal delivery, as the first ball was wide), Warner edged one and Kohli took a great catch at slip. Thereafter Bumrah took care of Mitch Marsh and Steve Smith.

Australia was reeling at 47/3 after 7 overs.

This is where I think India made the fourth and final strategic error of not going for the kill. As explained Siraj hadn’t bowled yet and with the dew fast approaching, India needed to get some overs from Jadeja and Kuldeep. For some strange reason, India didn’t set up attacking fields. I expected India to set a Test Match field. If we had to win this World Cup, we had to pick the remaining 7 wickets. We had to use an attacking field to stop the singles and force them to take the aerial route, a risky approach to get runs. Yes, we only had 240 to defend but…..

The rest as we all know is Travis Head and Labuschagne went about their business. Head the aggressor and Labuschagne the grafter. In the end, they won quite comfortably. The way they won, it felt like Australia would have chased even a 300. They won with 7 overs to spare. But that’s speculation.

We lost, we came up short, and there were several things from a luck perspective that didn’t go our way. We can’t control Lady Luck, but the things we could control, we went horribly wrong. We won the first ten overs of our batting and the first ten overs when Australia was batting, the remaining 73 overs were all Australia. They dominated us and they won it easily. Cummins made good on his promise to silence the 130K strong Ahmedabad crowd. It was so near yet so far all over again for us.

While so many obituaries have been written, one thing we need to acknowledge amongst all the angst is that, the team played brilliantly in the entire tournament and that as a team and as fans, we can hold our heads high. Yes, we didn’t win, but we can all be proud of the way the whole team played throughout the tournament. I know it hurts, but I also know that we will overcome this and we will win another World Cup. What I don’t know is, if that will reduce the pain from this loss. This is more than what I felt in 2003, more than what I felt in 2019’s loss in the Semis. If ever there was an Indian team that deserved a World Cup, it was this one and alas they have nothing to show for it. 

While the record books will talk about Shami as the leading wicket-taker, Kohli as the leading run-getter (not only in this World Cup but World Cups as a whole), MVP of the tournament, and most centuries in ODI. It will not say anything about Rohit Sharma and that hurts. Rohit Sharma played his best World Cup, walked the talk as a Captain, and yet came up short.

Finally to conclude a dialogue from Masaaan – Saala ye dukh kahe khatm nahi hota be?