Still the Best

WHEN IT FINALLY ENDED IN AHMEDABAD, there was sadness. A tragic ending, of the over­whelming kind. Rohit Sharma, a born leader of men, did his best to hold his emotions during a customary set of handshakes, first with his glum bunch of players and then with the exultant, manic and newly-crowned world champions, the Austra­lians, celebrating somewhere between gully and point on the playing field. At the same time, Virat Kohli knocked the glowing bails out of the stumps and buried his face in his cap, even as Mohammed Siraj wept into his shirt collar and later into Jasprit Bumrah’s shoulder. KL Rahul perhaps did not see any of this, as he collapsed on his pad­ded knees and had his face wrapped inside his keeping gloves.

By now, Sharma had had enough. Before any of the other play­ers, be it in blue or yellow, had even moved away from the infield of the Motera ground, the Indian skipper had already begun climbing the long flight of stairs to the home dressing room, wiping his eyes and mouth on his shirt sleeve along the way. When he reached the highest point, it made for an astonishing sight, for there Sharma was at a vantage point and well above the others that he had left behind; figuratively speaking, exactly where he would have wanted to be at the end of this final—heads and shoulders above the rest and on top of the world.

But alas for Sharma and the team he helped shape, figurative never could turn literal. And the best side of this World Cup—the standard-bearers for how the 50-over format will be approached in the near future even—had their one bad day of a 45-day-long event when it mattered most and finished second; thus, a hitherto unbeat­en side that was primed to be immortalised for their winning streak as well as their incredulous approach towards the game ended up winning hearts, but not the trophy. They, however, did win a title they would rather not have won—that of being the best team to have played at a 50-over World Cup, any World Cup, whose campaign did not end with a star on the jersey.

South Africa’s thumping crew of 1996 or even Brazil’s delicious 1998 footballing run now don’t hold a candle to the mighty runners-up of 2023, not only the most superior set-up of this campaign but ever played at a World Cup. That’s how great Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid’s boys were; so, that’s what they should be proud of, and that’s possibly why they should be remembered. One bad match, even if it was the day that mattered most to them (and their extreme, fairweather fans), cannot alter that tangible truth. The fact remains that this was India’s greatest-ever World Cup campaign, a view that seems to be gaining ground as the fog of war, so to speak, finally clears.

“[We] ran a really good campaign. Really proud of the boys, the way we played right through this tournament, the kind of cricket we played, just the quality of cricket that we played right through this tournament, I thought was quite exceptional,” said Dravid, retaining his clarity of what India stood for at this World Cup, despite being presented to the media just minutes after the loss. “So, really proud of the efforts, proud of everything that we gave. But yeah, obviously a tough [last] day at the office.”

As coach, this was Dravid’s third unsuccessful shot at an ICC title in the space of exactly one year—a loss at the semifinals of the T20 World Cup hosted by Australia in November last year, a loss in the World Test Championship final to the Aussies at the Oval in London this June (Travis Head has essentially snatched two world titles away from India in the gap of just five months with big centuries in both these massive finals), and now this. But there is a legend doing the rounds of Indian press boxes that it was the crushing defeat to England at the T20 World Cup in 2022 (the eventual winners of the trophy chased down India’s total of 168 without losing a wicket) that made Dravid take Sharma aside in the sullen Adelaide dressing room that night and urge him to change the team’s blueprint/ template/approach if they were to seriously compete for the big trophies.

That conversation, confirmed by Dinesh Karthik (India’s wicketkeeper at that T20 World Cup) to a few journalists recently, would pay the most phenomenal dividends a year later, as Sharma and Dravid would chop, change, tweak and adjust their play­ing eleven for a whole 12 months to get their squad and gameplan just right, not caring for the defeats, noise and criticism that tends to come with such experimentation. For, their logic was that if they didn’t use the several in­consequential bilateral ODI series that always stud an international cricket calendar, then where and when would they? Both their per­fectly refined attacking gameplan as well as the final World Cup squad of 15 fell in place as the last couple of pieces of the jigsaw exactly in the nick of time for the World Cup opener against Australia in Chennai.

Each of the five specialist bowlers that In­dia picked (including R Ashwin, who would play his only match of this campaign in his beloved Chepauk), coupled with the lone all-rounder in Hardik Pandya, all took wickets and conceded fru­gal runs to restrict the eventual world champions to just 199. But that score seemed stiff, steep and daunting even as India’s top order hiccupped their way to 2/3 in reply—Sharma, Ishan Kishan (opening the batting in place of the regular, then dengue-plagued Shubman Gill) and Shreyas Iyer were all out for zeroes. But Rahul, who his namesake coach showed great faith in through thick and thin during the long road to this World Cup, was about to pay back his debt.

DROPPING A SOLID, wrought-iron anchor near Marina Beach, wicketkeeper Rahul really came into his own in the number 5 position in the batting order with an extraordinary essay of 97 unbeaten runs. His winning six brought him to his haunches—sometimes timing the ball too well is not good for personal milestones either. Sharma didn’t miss out on his own landmark in the next game in Delhi against an Afghanistan side that would soon earn a reputation of being true giant-killers, and nearly also earn a spot in the semis. And what an astounding run it would begin for the Indian captain’s newly-minted style of batting.

No one in the Indian team is more comfortable with playing a long ODI innings than Sharma, having hit three double-centuries in the format (including the highest-ever score of 264 runs). But he was going to sacrifice all of that, especially being circumspect aids batting deep, to give India phantasmal starts and take advantage of the fielding restrictions of the first powerplay period.

Against Afghanistan, he would get to his 31st hundred in ODI cricket—his only one of this World Cup. Still, his 86 against Pakistan in Ahmedabad in the next game was just as valuable, as was his string of forties (five of them in all) as the tournament pro­gressed through the group stages. By the time he was out and had passed the proverbial torch down the order, India were always off to a sizzling start (including in the final), and the country’s venerated number 3 batsman, Virat Kohli, never had much of a problem in carrying forward the heat.

In games three and four, against Bangladesh in Pune and New Zealand in picturesque Dharamshala, it was Kohli’s turn to get the big runs; to the point where both chases ended up becom­ing about whether he would get to his hundred or not. He did in Pune and didn’t in Dharamshala (missing out by five runs), but the real gamechanger of this World Cup would emerge between just these two matches. When Pandya limped off injured in Pune, India’s thinktank made a double substitution of all-rounders for specialists for the Dharamshala game—bringing in Suryaku­mar Yadav for Pandya and, wait for it (because he had to as well), Mohammed Shami for Shardul Thakur.

And nothing about India’s campaign was the same again. With a seam position blessed by the gods coupled with a release fueled by backspin, Shami would find a bespoke length for each batsman and allow the pitch to do the rest. It wreaked absolute havoc and devastation. In his very first outing in Dharamshala, Shami took five wickets. In his next, against defending cham­pions England in Lucknow, he took four. In the same match, Sharma would blast 87 runs as well and thus began India’s jugalbandhis.

Like with any good rock band, the players all shone in their solo moments but produced their best music in tandem. So, against Sri Lanka in Mumbai, even as Gill, Kohli and Iyer stamped India’s batting authority with innings of 92, 88 and 82, respec­tively, Bumrah, Siraj and Shami dazzled with the ball to rip out the opposition’s will to survive with one, three and five wickets, respectively. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 55, Shami took the singular lead for World Cup wickets by an Indian and the team became the first to qualify for the semifinals with two games to spare. It was unrelenting, unabashed brilliance, where India’s bat­ting was the best the 50-over format had ever seen, yet, somehow, their bowlers were a notch better.

Against the South Africans in Kolkata, Kohli equalled Sachin Tendulkar’s record for most ODI centuries while Ravindra Jadeja’s five wickets ensured the Proteas couldn’t get close to the target. Then, against the Netherlands in Bengaluru, their last group game, Iyer and Rahul both ticked off their re­spective first World Cup hundreds of this campaign, and then Iyer did it all over again against New Zealand in the Mumbai semifinal. But that match will always be remembered for the other duet, between Kohli—who got to his record 50th ODI hun­dred and bowed in front of the legend he had just surpassed, Ten­dulkar—and Shami of course, who would go on to take India’s first-ever seven-for in ODI cricket.

This was all unprecedented stuff: cricket had simply never been played like this before. Now, the legacy of this team hinged on one match, the final against Australia, and if there was a fear that India were due for a bad game or that their middle order had yet to come under serious pressure thanks to the top order scoring all the runs, no one showed it—not the players, coaches, fans or even the pundits in the press boxes. Until, that is, the fear made itself known in one fell swoop.

Everything that could go wrong for India, and hadn’t thus far, went wrong simultaneously. Sharma banged his way to another brisk start, but once he was dismissed for 47, no one really got go­ing. Gill and Iyer—India’s future and moulded with an attacking bent of mind—were out for four runs each, leaving Kohli and Rahul to face the wrath of not just the Australian bowlers but also the abrasive pitch. On a surface that could’ve passed for a fourth-day Test match pitch, the men who rescued India on the opening day against the same side simply could not get going, scoring al­most any boundaries between them for a period of thirty overs.

When they were dismissed following their watchful fifties, it was down to Suryakumar Yadav and the tail. Yadav’s World Cup rust, coupled with the slowness of the wicket, ensured that there was simply no second wind and India limped to a total of 240 runs, which Australia would chase down comfortably thanks to Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne, who would account for nearly 80 per cent of those runs in one partnership. In what was a strange, desperate call, Sharma opened the bowling with Shami, who hadn’t once bowled with the brand-new ball in a tournament littered with his ageing ball wickets.

This had a cascading effect on the rest of the attack, with regular new-ball bowler Siraj struggling with the old ball and the spinners, Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav, going wicketless together for the first time in this World Cup. They were all put out of their collective misery with seven overs (or about half-an-hour) to spare and when it ended, the players had to largely face the pain alone for they were abandoned by their own fans, the largest cricket stadium in the world emptying out long before the last ball was bowled.

What truly must hurt this team is that Sharma, the brave leader of this fabulous setup and nearly 37 years old now, will perhaps not play another 50-over World Cup, which means that the greatest ODI batsman and (now) captain of this generation will not win the one trophy he always wanted to. Neither will Shami, 33, nor the only pair to have tasted World Cup success in 2011, Ashwin and Kohli, who will be 41 and 39, respectively, when the next edition in South Africa comes along in 2027.

But the near future is still a remarkably bright one, what with the churn of the cricket calendar being such that there’s a T20 World Cup to play for within just six months in the Caribbean and the US next year. Most, if not all, of these players from India’s World Cup squad in 2023 will dazzle in the T20 over format as well, just as they did in the 50-over one.

But well before that, when the pain of letting this World Cup slip recedes, be it in a week or a fortnight or a month or more, this Indian team will realise just how pathbreaking this campaign really was. For, when the dust eventually settles, great tragedy will be replaced by greater clarity on just how magical they were as a team, with or without a trophy to show for it.

AhmedabadAustraliacricketICC MEN’S CRICKET WORLD CUPICC World Cup 2023Indian cricketNarendra Modi