As I was preparing some green tea for myself, my friend randomly messaged me ‘300’. The message simply said 300! There was no context to what he said and yet, I understood what he meant. This is the kind of batting, we Indian fans have been treated to and this is what we all have come to expect. Although, we all knew how USA(still feels strange typing the country’s initials when talking about cricket) got the better of Pakistan in the last edition of the WC, as soon as Patel(the American skipper) invited Sky & his team to bat first, the first thing that came in the mind of all the Indians was the figure, ‘300’. It wasn’t that Spartan movie we remembered, it was the absolute demolition job that our batters regularly do, we remembered.
However, what transpired in the next 60 minutes was unbelievable for the Indian fans. No matter how despondent we were, we shouldn’t lie to ourselves that we didn’t see this coming. In fact, the Indian team has themselves professed that when they will play with this kind of bravado, there will be odd games in between where we struggle or might even look foolish/irresponsible. However, the big question is that are we okay with that attitude of putting fear in the hearts of opponents; the cost being, their will come a day or a surface that will actually test our skill-set, our mettle and not how many sixes can we hit.
When we pull off those crazy scores and play ultra aggressive cricket, it looks fantastic. However, if the opponent wasn’t USA yesterday and suppose it wasn’t the first day of the tournament, make it the last day of the tournament, the result could have been different. Will that have been acceptable to us? Playing like a gladiator for the whole of the series and stumbling at the last block.
Supporters(I am one of them) might say, that it is a possibility that this might never happen. But we need to keep in mind that there is difference in an event like a world cup and a bilateral series. Pressure is pretty different when playing in a world cup as against in a bilateral series. Moreover, if you demolish a team a couple of times in a bilateral series, more often than not, they tend to roll over or you start experimenting with your playing eleven. But here, even if you demolish a team, the next match would be against a different team. So either the baggage wouldn’t there or there would be a gap, when you play the same team again.
I think(as a fan), that we should have roles defined within this team. I know that roles had already been defined within the team but from the outside, it looks like everybody has the same role, no matter the surface, no matter the situation, no matter the opposition, just tonk the ball. I might have over-simplified it but yeah, that’s the gist of it.
So Ishan & Abhishek can run amok in the opposition’s camps but if they aren’t off to a flier, the likes of Tilak, SKY(who was magnificent yesterday), Dube can just bat the situation. If we are off to a great start, the middle order can join the arty and keep blasting away. I would also like to see Hardik at 5, he is too good a player to come at 7.
After that magical innings of SKY(he will certainly cherish it with his grandkids), the Indian bowlers wrapped up everything pretty professionally. Once they were three down for thirty odd runs after the powerplay, all the excitement left in the game was pretty artificial in nature.
All these questions came in my mind thinking what if Virat had been there? Had he also taken the same- no holds barred route that the other batsmen took or he would have put his head down & ran those twos, only to finish big at the end? People might call this present Indian batting an evolution of sorts and yes, to be fair, it has been an evolution but we need to draw a line in there and ask our personnel to adapt according to the situation(barring my favourite duo of Ishan & Abhishek).
