Namma Chennai Diary | Team India Set To Make History By Defending T20 World Cup Title

The way India destroyed New Zealand while chasing the not-inconsiderable target of 209 in Raipur shows that Team India is in good shape to take on the challenge of defending the T20 World Cup title. Time will tell whether the fact that no team has been able to defend the title or win this World Cup three times is just a statistical quirk that can be challenged.

Team India has the batting weapons to take on this challenge. No other team could have put together such a formidable combination of great hitters in the batting order. And considering that Rohit Sharma, the captain of the title-winning team and one of the greatest strikers of the new white ball, left the game with a high score and is not part of this squad.

Rohit’s departure has left the field open for more specialist talent to fill the gaps in the T20 squad, some of whom have already managed to make the grade; The latest was Ishan Kishan, who made a smart comeback after being chastised for his attitude, behavior and tendency to ignore even the white-ball variant of domestic cricket.

We have all heard about Bazball and how it revitalized Test cricket with a positive mindset for a while. But Team India’s strikers came up with the concept of attacking batting from the first ball to the 120th ball well back and it is this aggressive mindset that has shaped the Indians’ campaign to reclaim the trophy, as they did in Barbados in 2024.

Bowling and fielding will need to increase slightly for the team to be hyper-competitive. Cup events are different in that each match becomes a life-or-death match when teams advance to the knockout stages. Being able to produce all-round cricket at 20-over pace in three consecutive matches from the quarter-finals to conquering the top flight is a huge challenge.

The fact that Team India could look to go for runs in the Powerplay despite being 6-2 with a six off a catch at the crease showed how excellent Ishan was at executing the direct attack of his innings. The idea that he should come on early to gain some time in the middle before the big game was a good tactical thought by skipper Suryakumar Yadav.

It is this courage that has made Team India the hottest favorite to win the trophy in history, as Abhishek Sharna has consistently shown. The fact that Suryakumar Yadav has also abandoned his poor T20i form to hit an impressive 80 is another reason why it is easy to conclude that this is the most striking batting line-up for international T20 players that Team India has assembled in a long time.

Of course, there are a few lessons to be learned from the Kiwis, who have been so good in ODIs that they won the first ODI series in India in the five decades the duo have met in that format since they faced each other in the first Prudential World Cup in England in 1975. It wasn’t just Darryl Mitchell’s individual brilliance that made the unforgettable upset possible.

Known as cricket’s bridesmaids for their penchant for finishing second at the 2019 World Cup, even when they were morally first, the Black Caps have managed to punch well above their weight while also being a model of consistency. It is the team-first national sporting culture that has served them well in disrupting things like the team merit ladder on the field.

The greatness of Kiwi cricket culture is that they don’t play in the gallery. They believe in strategies to improve the talents and skills they have, and when the going gets tough, they have the ability to overcome the most challenging situations. Even Virat Kohli, in his purple form, couldn’t beat New Zealand in the big last-minute chase. And in their sports culture, there is no higher place to respect team coaches than 11 players forming a team and playing as one.

(R. Mohan is Resident Editor of Chennai and Tamil Nadu editions of Deccan Chronicle)