The Invincibles

WELL AFTER THE sun had smeared into the Dubai haze on March 9, two men in the evening of their respective careers, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, broke out of the celebrating blue pack and stood beside the pitch, armed with a single stump each. Like drawn swords, the stumps clashed between them, but their wielders had in unison broken into a dance, legs folding from left to right, the stumps clubbing into each other like dandiya sticks, alter­natingly from right to left. Their team­mates applauded, the wider ring of the spectators in the stands roared before Rohit and Kohli stopped in their tracks, belly-laughed and embraced each other with the widest of grins.

This is how the era-defining men of world cricket brought in India’s latest ma­jor in the sport, the ICC Champions Tro­phy. But the celebration seemed more per­sonal than that—almost as if their lofty expectations of self and Indian cricket (of which they are the incumbent stewards) had at long last triumphed all at once. It was an altogether different shade of hap­piness to Barbados from a few months ago, when these two men had led India to their first ICC trophy in a long while, the T20 World Cup.

In one corner of the Kensington Oval in June 2024, there was a famous embrace on the stairwell of the dressing room, but that one was drenched with happy tears. Tears at putting an end to an 11-year drought of ICC titles, having had fallen just short in the finals on numerous occa­sions, with Kohli and Rohit as captains, no less: the 2017 Champions Trophy (lost to Pakistan under Kohli), the 2021 and 2023 title-matches of the World Test Champion­ships (lost to New Zealand and Australia respectively, both under Rohit) and lastly, most painfully, the 2023 ODI World Cup (at home, to Australia, also under Rohit).

Many miles but just nine months later in Dubai, the moment was steeped in un­adulterated joy. Joy at having won their second ICC trophy in under a year; joy at having become the undisputed kings of white-ball cricket. Ever since their Asia Cup win in the 50-over format in 2023, and notwithstanding their loss in the fi­nal of the World Cup in the same format in Ahmedabad, India had trounced all teams in the big tournaments without ex­ception, winning the last two ICC events without losing a single game. Such has been their unprecedented dominance over both formats of white-ball cricket.

Couple this run with India’s depth in talent that even Kohli, usually reserved in his predictions, couldn’t help but paint a picture of the team’s future. He threw an arm around the next-gen star and open­ing batsman Shubman Gill at the end of the final and said this to the on-field in­terviewer: “When you leave, you want to leave the team in a better place. I feel we have a squad that is ready to take on the world for the next eight years.”

Kohli and his long-time great ally, Rohit, will certainly not be a part of that squad beyond the ODI World Cup to be held in South Africa in 2027, but they had done enough, individually and col­lectively, for this Indian team to go down as one of the all-time greats. There was the West Indies side of the 1970s, dominat­ing Test cricket. Then came the Austra­lian unit at the turn of the century, ruling over both Tests and ODIs. And now there is the Indian team of the 2020s, reigning over two formats, like the Aussies of yore, but in 20-over and 50-over cricket. To be remembered as a once-in-a-generation powerhouse, then, is perhaps this Indian team’s greatest achievement.

The fact that India didn’t lose a single game in this Champions Trophy despite not having the services of their bowling spearhead Jasprit Bumrah—nursing an injury after an arduous tour of Aus­tralia—is commendable; even more so given that Rohit didn’t win a single toss during the entirety of the tournament. Instead, they focused on their strategies, laid out specifically for the advantage of getting to play all their matches in just one venue. Those plans revolved heavily around spin, employed with the vision of choking out the opposition’s ease of scoring. By the time the knock-out stage of the event began, India were playing all four spinners in their 15-man squad, the fourth and final entrant into the eleven being Varun Chakaravarthy.

BEFORE THIS FEBRUARY, Leg-spinner Chakaravarthy hadn’t played 50-over cricket for India. His second match in blue then came in the final group game against New Zealand, where he replaced pace bowling-all rounder Harshit Rana and promptly bagged his first internation­al five-wicket haul. He warranted a place in the semi-final against Australia, who, despite missing the services of nearly their entire bowling attack (regular captain Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and the le­thal Mitchell Starc all injured), can never be taken lightly in the pointy end of an ICC event.

Bowling alongside the spin op­tions of Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja, Chakaravarthy was the only slow bowler to finish his quota of 10 overs, claiming the wicket of the most dangerous Travis Head (who has alone defeated India in not one but two ICC finals in 2023) among his two dismiss­als. Together, the spin quartet restricted Steve Smith’s side to 264 runs, before Kohli led the chase with 84 runs, ably supported by Shreyas Iyer as well as the all-rounders in Patel, Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul. The final against New Zealand a few days later, in many ways, played out like a déjà vu, with the exception of Rohit playing the role of the batting mainstay and not Virat.

On a tricky wicket, New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner chose to bat first. Immediately, Rachin Ravindra got off to a flier, weighing down heavily on Mohammed Shami and his new-ball part­ner, Hardik Pandya, who ended up bowling just three overs in all. Rohit turned to the wrist spin of Chakaravarthy earlier than expected and he instantly put a break on the scoring with the wicket of opener Will Young. Alongside the left-arm wrist spin of Yadav, whose bowling spell was noth­ing short of a magical one, Chakaravarthy and the spinners restricted the Kiwis to a very gettable score of 251 runs. It seemed almost too little as India’s openers, Rohit and Gill, put together the highest first-wicket stand of the tournament with 105 runs, until, very much against the run of play in the 19th over, Gill got out to a spectacular catch by Glenn Phillips. And just three balls later, the part-time spinner Michael Bracewell had got rid of new man Kohli for just one run.

Taking a leaf from India’s book, Santner too was operating with four spin­ners, albeit three of them part-timers. But they did their job, applying the squeeze to such an extent that a maiden over by Bracewell saw Rohit charge Ravindra off the very first delivery in the following over, only to be stumped for 76 (extending India’s long wait for a centurion in an ICC final). At 122/3, with both Rohit and Virat back in the hut, the road to the trophy didn’t seem all that straightforward any­more. But Iyer and Patel soothed frayed nerves and eked out a 61-run stand, before Rahul and Pandya did exactly what they had in the semi-finals, which is to keep a grip on building pressure in the death overs with regular strikes to the ropes, often early on in an over.

Therefore, though nervy and often­times uncomfortable, the end could never turn into an outright thriller, like it had during India’s march to the T20 title against South Africa in Barbados. So, even as Jadeja pulled the winning hit to the boundary with an entire over to spare, an entire team (and not a group of indi­viduals as is always the case) took credit for India’s largely unexacting title march. “To win titles, which has been missing in the past, the whole team must step up in different games,” said a cheerful Kohli at the end of the campaign.

Kohli knows what he is talking about, given he has been part of several Indian set-ups in the past where he (or Rohit, or Bumrah) was singularly responsible for the win. But this Champions Trophy vic­tory was such a collective effort that the Man of the Tournament award didn’t even go to an Indian player (New Zealand’s Ravindra claimed that prize). Kohli added: “If you look at this tournament, over the course of five matches, everyone has put their hand up somewhere or another.”

True, for this too will be a lasting legacy of the Kohli-Rohit era, that they somehow managed to turn their individual bril­liance into collective glory. Apart from a team shouldering the burden equally, the fact that a player of Rishabh Pant’s calibre couldn’t break into the playing eleven, or Suryakumar Yadav’s talent even make the cut for the wider squad, is most tell­ing: that Indian cricket is in safe hands.

Those hands may have lifted India’s second ICC title in under a year, but the Champions Trophy achievement was second to none, largely because an entire squad earned it together. This, then, was reason enough for Rohit and Kohli, now winners of four ICC titles each, to not just celebrate but break into a dance even.

Champions Trophy 2025DubaiIndian cricketRohit SharmaVirat Kohli