India’s triumph a reward for the collective
Dubai: “This trophy is no less,” skipper Rohit Sharma said admiring the glittering Champions Trophy. “Ask me, what it has taken to get it.”
India’s Champions Trophy triumph on Sunday will be remembered for many things. More than anything else for the team being greater than the sum of its parts. India have won bigger trophies before. But when was the last time you struggled to pick an Indian name for Player-of-the-Tournament when they had won the title?
Shreyas Iyer got the most runs for India without scoring a single hundred. He got out on 48 in the final in search of another boundary. In another India team, he may have wanted to protect his wicket, take the match deep. Iyer was clear he must not allow the asking rate to climb. If he got out in the process, the next man would take over.
The next man in was KL Rahul, whose job it was to stay till the end. Quite often, his partner would be Hardik Pandya, willing to take the aerial route. He would do that as he was simply playing to his strength. “Bachpan se chakke marne ka shauk hai. Pehle taakat nahi thi. (I’ve loved hitting sixes since childhood. I just didn’t have the strength earlier),” he told reporters.
In case Hardik got out in the process, India had an insurance cover in Ravindra Jadeja (averages 32 in ODIs, has 4 Test hundreds) – to walk in at No.8. The cover came in handy in the final. Jadeja scored the winning runs and followed it up with his dance moves.
Rarely has an Indian line-up batted so deep, without compromising on the bowling quality. It’s the number of all-rounders who made it possible. The victorious 1983 World Cup team had Kapil Dev, Mohinder Amarnath, Madan Lal and Roger Binny, medium-pacers tailor-made for English conditions. In Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja, this India team had a winning spin quartet for the sluggish pitches in Dubai.
When Chakravarthy went for wickets in the Powerplay, Axar complemented him by providing control. When Kuldeep attacked, Jadeja squeezed the scoring rate in the middle overs. Could anyone step up for the absent Jasprit Bumrah in the death overs? They found a collective way, in the returning Mohammed Shami and wrist spinners Chakravarthy and Kuldeep challenging the batters to hit it out of the desert venue at their own risk.
“If you look at the players from No.1 to No.11, the boys who have had the opportunity to bat or bowl, they have contributed in their own way. So, eventually when you all play together, and a lot of people contribute together, you get a lot of success consistently,” Rohit said. “I think we saw in the tournament that the people who got the ball played their role. The players who got the opportunity to bat, they won the game by batting.”
Practicing as he preached, Rohit carved a team role of his own – that of a Powerplay slayer before spin was introduced. Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli are the only Indian batters to get a hundred each, but they couldn’t have got them without Rohit and Iyer complementing them with aggressive gameplans. It was no surprise that Rohit had the highest strike rate among India’s top six batters – 100.00. Rahul (97.90), Kohli (82.88) and Iyer (79.41) followed.
“I know how important it is to score runs in the Powerplay because we saw in all five games after 10 overs it becomes very difficult when the field spreads and spinners come on. It’s very important for you to take chances. You may not see the consistency of big runs, but I am very clear in my mind about what I have to do,” Rohit said.
“I think Rohit’s approach puts fear in bowlers,” Mitchell Santner, his New Zealand counterpart, said. “He is pretty happy to hit bowlers off their lengths. And I guess the way he goes about it, you might fail a few times, but if you can really get your team off to a flyer, especially on a slow wicket, you put yourself ahead of the game.”
The Indian captain spoke about how worthless he felt with his 2019 World Cup runs – he got five hundreds – because the team didn’t win. In this Champions Trophy, his tally of 180 was only fourth among India’s top six. “Woh maza nahi aaya (It wasn’t fun),” he said. “You feel very happy when you win a match, and when you contributed to it, it feels even better.”
Kohli might have felt the same way about his 2023 ODI World Cup runs too. “These are the things you want to play (for titles), playing under pressure and putting your hand up,” he told the broadcaster. “Whenever you leave, you want to leave the team in a better place. I feel we’ve a squad that’s ready to take on the world for the next eight years.”
So clear were India with their plans that only 12 players were needed to pull off their all-win (5) run. A trophy win also to exorcise the ghosts of the 2021 T20 World Cup group stage exit in Dubai.
