In 2021, India losing a match seems to be a phenomenon. How can the country with the largest talent pool, the richest cricketing board, and the highest-paid cricketers lose a match? The bigger the occasion, the more intense the drama. A defeat, as seen over the last few years, sends the entire nation into four stages of emotional turmoil.
It starts with grief. Then comes introspection. This is the fun part, where fans dig deeper as per capacity and come up pet theories. The second phase usually produces the scapegoat – the exact component that malfunctioned in the process that led to the crankling of machinery.
The third stage is the blame game. Once aware of the malefactor, a fan cannot remain silent. It is important to voice out the opinions. The last phase is retrospect, where one deconstructs the past and builds alternative future.
Five days to the World Test Championship defeat, it is safe to say that we have finally reached the last stage of indulging in retrospection.
‘We will not wait for a year or so and have to plan ahead. If you see our white-ball team now, we have great depth and guys are ready and confident. Same thing needs to be done with Test cricket,’ said Virat Kohli.
A typical Kohli statement, a calculated glib as placid as lakewater but yet somehow failing to hide the undercurrents belying it. While it indicates Kohli’s dynamism and proactiveness, not afraid of plugging holes on the earliest sighting, it may also be interpreted as Kohli hinting on drastic steps.
India has a vast reservoir of untapped talents. But have things really turned so dire that swift changes need to be made, replacing cricketers in the current squad? They have won a Test series Down Under a few months ago, dismantled England at home, and lost the WTC final to one of the greatest Test sides of the era.
Is it really a time for drastic steps? Is it really a time to forego squad combinations that had brought India to the pinnacle in the first place?
Kohli said he would not wait for a full year to make changes. That is commendable. Stagnation has hurt many a formidable sporting empire. However, there is a thin line between complacency and desperation. India are, by no stretch of imagination, a tranquil outfit. Not only are they brimming with ideas and imagination, they also possess the tenacity to implement them.
It is not that they were no match to New Zealand in Southampton. They fought valiantly, provided a sense of thrill, optimism and a reason to believe for most parts in conditions where the game was decided by inches.
Kohli also talked about ‘intent’, or a lack of it, and stressed the need of bringing people with the right ‘mindset’ into the squad. There is not much to decipher here. Any talk about intent immediately brings us to either Cheteshwar Pujara and Rishabh Pant.
Pujara hasn’t played a big knock since aeons. (Image Source: IANS)
Admittedly, runs have dried up for Pujara. The approach that has worked elsewhere, especially in Australia, did not in Southampton. The Dukes ball here moves all day, and all it takes to undo hours of stonewalling is one delivery.
Pujara was tested by a relentless New Zealand pace battery that gave little respite. They have bowled in the right areas at alarming frequency. Sure, he was outclassed this once, but he had clawed his way back in Australia, and has the technique and resilience to do that again. He needs, and deserves, some time.
Rohit Sharma’s resurgence as an opening batsman has been a pleasing sight for fans. He is yet to play one of those ‘daddy hundreds’ on away tours. However, given his recent solidity in conditions favourable to batting, it will not be outlandish to predict such innings in near future.
Shubman Gill has a weakness against the in-swinging delivery. He is terrific off the back-foot but looks iffy while lunging forward. He will be under hot water if he fails to perform in the first couple of Test matches against England.
But other than that, hardly anyone has been poor enough to fall out of favour this summer. Equations will be different after the England tour, however. But this is not a time to panic.
Kohli himself has been a centre of criticism after failing to clear the last hurdle despite being a dominant force throughout the WTC. Sports has an obsession with winning, and rightly so. You may be a supremely talented individual but at the end of the day, all that matters is your trophy count.
Richard Gasquet could hit a one-handed backhand with grace and poise that made him look like poetry in motion. But how many Grand Slams has he won? Brian Lara could nail that one-legged pull shot to perfection, but how many titles have West Indies won with him?
Kohli can play drives that beggars any description, pile up runs and centuries not many can match even in virtual games, but can he lead India’s golden generation to an ICC trophy? And if he cannot, why does he not step down? This is perhaps the most pressing question – at least if trends are anything to go by – in a country otherwise going through a humanitarian crisis of devastating proportion.
Not that Kohli needs a trophy to do justice to their illustrious career. His individual heroics are sufficient for that. But the wider point is different. Sports and the concept of modern nation-states are so intertwined that the inherent talent makes sense only when it brings glory to the citizens.
That is something India has failed to do, yet again. And as is often the case with Indian fans, the blame is squarely on the captain.
The question is not at all vacuous, but it definitely has some flaws. In a team sport like cricket, the role of the captain, at times, gets blown out of proportion. Modern sport is heavily reliant on analytics. Most decisions made by captains on the field are decided beforehand, based on data and observations from a core team management group.
Admittedly, there are subtle changes that make a big difference, but it is too naive to think of Kohli as a rookie who does not grasp the nuances. Over 20,000 runs and 71 centuries in international cricket have not been achieved easily. Kohli is one of the elite cricketing brains of his generation, and will remain so with or without the trophy.