Don’t cram everything you own in the washing machine at once could be an apt metaphor for the current cycle that the Indian cricket team finds itself spinning around in.
Since October 5, various shades of this team have played an ODI World Cup, eight bilateral T20Is, three ODIs and two Test matches and the next assignment is three T20Is in six days across Mohali, Indore and Bengaluru against Afghanistan, just a week after an all-format tour of South Africa. That is a total of 16 venues in two countries across 56 days.
Obligatory FTP fixtures aside, the amount of cricket that the Indian cricket team has played in the last six weeks makes it look like someone wanting to get their laundry done fast. Since exiting the ODI World Cup with defeat to Australia, India have played seven completed T20Is – they beat Australia 4-1 and shared the South Africa series 1-1 after one washout – and now have these three matches as their last in the format before the T20 World Cup in June.
Like that front-loading washer whose barrel spins clothes around at 1500 revolutions per minute, the Indian cricket team has been swung from venue to venue and format to format. How then does one take three T20Is against Afghanistan too seriously, given that the IPL will serve as the BCCI selection committee’s picking ground for selection for the World Cup? And are the selectors looking only as far as the World Cup in June, or further down the line?
A look at the squad for this series offers a hint.
The big news from Sunday night’s announcement is the return of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to India’s T20I squad after 14 months. The pair has not played a single T20I since November 10, 2022 when the Indian team was knocked out of the previous T20 World Cup and with regular skipper Hardik Pandya still in rehabilitation and Suryakumar Yadav – who led in the previous two series – sidelined with an ankle injury, the BCCI selectors have gone with Rohit as leader. Interestingly, the BCCI has not named a vice-captain like it did for the past four T20I assignments.
So then, was the recall of Rohit due to a leadership vacuum, with Pandya, Suryakumar and Ruturaj Gaikwad – who captained the T20I side to an Asian Games gold – all injured currently, or because there is an overarching sentiment inside Indian cricket that he deserves one last shot at winning the T20 World Cup?
Rohit is 36 and has not been in good T20 form, whether for India in the past two years or Mumbai Indians for several reasons, and his record at T20 World Cups is nothing to boast about. The best returns he has had at a single edition are the 200 runs made in 2014. In the 2016 T20 World Cup, Rohit managed 88 runs in five innings. In 2021, 174 in five and in 2022, a measly 116 from six. It seems the selectors, on the one hand not able to decide on a younger captaincy option, and on the other looking at Rohit’s ODI form, have decided to hand the veteran of all eight T20 World Cups a chance at a swan song.
Kohli’s recall speaks for itself, given that he is India’s leading run-getter in T20Is at an average of 52 and strike-rate of 139 and has twice been Player of the Tournament at T20 World Cups. India’s selectors value Kohli’s experience at one-down, specifically when it comes to chasing where he has pulled off some stunning innings, and this means that Suryakumar will bat at No 4 at the World Cup.
From the most recent T20I squad, a total of 10 players have been retained: Yashaswi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma, Tilak Varma, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav, Mukesh Kumar and Ravi Bishnoi. With Suryakumar and Gaikwad injured, Shreyas Iyer and Mohammed Siraj rested, Ishan Kishan on personal leave and Ravindra Jadeja absent without any specific reason, the new faces for this series are, aside from Rohit and Kohli, the pace bowler Avesh Khan, Mumbai allrounder Shivam Dube and Sanju Samson.
As we know, more than success or failure in the Afghanistan series, the first month of the IPL will dictate the final makeup of India’s T20 World Cup squad. Of the players not picked for this series, we can assume that Pandya, Suryakumar, Iyer, Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah will return for the T20 World Cup with KL Rahul and Mohammed Shami also not ruled out yet. That means that at least six spots from the current T20I squad will have to be vacated five months from now. Truly, these three T20Is are the latest load of India’s washing machine cycle that promises to churn on for the rest of 2024.
