Form and Spirit

IT WAS THE BRIGHTEST OF days in Cape Town, and the cricket ground, Newlands—located on the foothill of the majestic Table Mountain—basked under a crisp sun. Those sharp rays warmed all hearts and minds on this picturesque January morning in 2011, until the Indian team bus pulled into the ground’s parking lot. For one player in particular, no amount of sunshine could penetrate the metaphorical cloud hanging over his head. It was the gloomiest of days for Rohit Sharma, and the mountain had seemingly cast its vast shadow only on him.

January 17, 2011—a date Sharma has certainly not forgotten. Back home in India, the squad for the 2011 World Cup had just been announced and Sharma was the surprise exclusion (the selectors had picked Piyush Chawla instead to bolster the team’s spin resources for the conducive subcontinental tracks). He emerged from the bus with a frown on his face, shoulders slumped and dragging his slippered feet. A hit in the nets to tune up on the eve of the third ODI of the series was possibly the last thing on his mind.

And thus, Sharma, who had played a key hand in winning India the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007, was going to be a spectator for the 50-over World Cup at home, one that MS Dhoni’s men would go on to win in his hometown of Mumbai no less. “Really, really disappointed at not being part of the WC squad. I need to move on from here. But honestly, it was a big setback,” he tweeted days before India’s 2011 campaign began in Dhaka. Many years later, when he did manage to move on rather successfully, the memory of that snub still rankled.

At the 2019 World Cup in England, shortly after scoring a record fifth hundred in the campaign, Sharma presented himself to the media in Leeds and was promptly asked about how far he had come since that fateful day of the snub in Cape Town, and immediately he clicked his tongue and sighed. He muttered something about the memory being “very disappointing” but “it’s been eight years now since it happened.” Recently, in an interview with the ICC, Sharma even admitted that he “decided not to watch the World Cup” while it was going on.

Eight years have turned to 12, but life for Sharma continues to throw him incredible surprises. Not only will he live the childhood dream of playing an ODI World Cup at home over the next couple of months, but he will do so as the captain of the number one team in the world; not the worst way to shake that 12-year-old silverback off his shoulders. But one burden has been replaced by another; Sharma now has the weight of a nation’s collective expectations on his back, but he will know in his bones that he has the resources to pull it off in familiar conditions.

Opening the batting with Sharma is the new star of Indian cricket, Shubman Gill, who happens to be in the form of his young life. This year alone, 24-year-old Gill has hit five ODI hundreds (at an obscene average of 72.35), including a double-century against New Zealand in Hyderabad (208) in January. He now enters the campaign opener against Australia in Chennai (October 8) with a hundred in his final preparatory ODI game in Indore, against who else but the Aussies.

Batting directly below the openers is the evergreen Virat Kohli. Younger and fitter than ever at 34 (he turns 35 during the World Cup), Kohli has found an incredible vein of form across formats—in the last 12 months alone, he has hit Test hundreds, ODI hundreds, IPL hundreds, and even a T20I hundred. The only World Cup in which he didn’t score a century was the one he captained in 2019, and now he is unburdened from the stresses of leadership, the man with 47 ODI centuries could well equal, if not overtake, Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 49 during this campaign itself. But he is as selfless as batsmen get, so the only thing on his mind will be to become the only Indian to win two ODI World Cups.

In fact, Gill isn’t the only Indian double-centurion from the last 12 months. His captain and buddy from their age-group days, Ishan Kishan, made his maiden hundred a double against Bangladesh in December last year. But such is the depth of our squad that
Kishan is not assured a place in the side; he’ll have to joust with KL Rahul for the wicketkeeper spot (and the number four position in the batting order), who too has found some terrific form just in time for the World Cup. When Shreyas Iyer pulled up injured for the Pakistan game at the Asia Cup, Rahul grabbed his chance with both hands—smacking an unbeaten hundred and then carrying that momentum into the Australia series, where he struck consecutive fifties.

That brings us to Iyer, who too returned from his injury and instantly banged out a hundred against Australia in Indore recently, multiplying the team management’s selection headaches. But these are as good as headaches get, for India has a problem of plenty. So much so that the extremely versatile Suryakumar Yadav may not find a place in the starting eleven. It is the same everywhere you look: India has four all-rounders in medium pacers Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur and two left-arm orthodox bowlers, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. That makes three left-arm spinners in the squad—with chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav being the third.

India famously didn’t pick an off-spinner because of Kuldeep’s presence, but then Ravichandran Ashwin returned to the ODI fold for the Australia series after 18 months (in fact, it’s more like six years if you don’t count the two ODIs he played in Paarl last year) as the management looked to rest Kuldeep before the World Cup, and he too found a way to make life harder for coach Rahul Dravid. Now, Ashwin could well be a shoo-in through the backdoor if any of the others get injured. And like Ashwin, fast bowler Mohammed Shami has thrown his hat into the ring for a starting eleven role against the Australians in Chennai.

The pace department was all but set in stone following the heroics of the other Mohammed—Siraj—in the Asia Cup final. Siraj’s six-wicket haul (which bowled Sri Lanka out for just 50) had ended the debate and ensured that he would be opening the bowling with Jasprit Bumrah, the tireless leader of India’s new pace attack. But then the management decided to rest the pair before the World Cup and 33-year-old Shami, bowling with the new ball in their stead, took only his second career five-wicket haul against Australia in Mohali, and this of course further muddied the waters.

So, who’ll sit out when the players take the field in Chennai? Will it be red-hot Siraj or red-hot Shami? Or will it be the ever-dangerous Bumrah? Or will Dravid and Sharma tamper with the balance (unlikely, thanks to the conditions) to fit all of them in? In all likelihood, they’ll all get a go at one time or another, given just how long this tournament really is. Just like in 2019, the 2023 World Cup format demands each team to play each of the other nine teams, with the top four teams at the end of this group stage qualifying for the semi-finals.

This format was first employed at the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and was much loved by both the players and the audiences around the world. It still got shelved by the time the next World Cup came about in the subcontinent and didn’t see the light of day for a period of six World Cups and 27 years. But when it returned in England, it did so with a bang, with too many close contests to count in the group stage before the mother of all World Cup finals gave a World Cup for the ages an apt ending.

“Kids, don’t take up sport. Take up baking or something. Die at 60 really fat and happy,” tweeted New Zealand’s Jimmy Neesham at the end of the game, after the match excruciatingly ended in a tie twice (the second time in the super-over) and yet found himself on the losing side because of some ridiculous (now defunct) rule about the team that hits more boundaries wins. That team happened to be Eoin Morgan’s England, and the Cup finally did come home, or in this case, stay exactly where it was. This made 2019 the third straight World Cup in a row where the hosts lifted the trophy—a trend that Sharma will want to continue for just another edition.

Cricket World Cup 2023Indian cricket teamMahendra Singh DhoniODIRohit SharmaShubman Gill