Sometimes, it takes a loss to cause a revolution. For India’s white-ball cricket, it took a chastening defeat to turn things over.
On November 10, 2022, they got a 10-wicket thrashing from England at the Adelaide Oval in the T20 World Cup semi-final. It was then that the alarm bells began ringing for their approach in white-ball cricket.
India batted first and scored 168/6 in their 20 overs. They got a boost from Hardik Pandya’s late attack of 63 runs off 33 balls. They had struggled to gain momentum in their innings in the first half and scored slowly in the middle overs before Pandya’s late attack gave them a respectable score.
England’s opening pair had a different approach when they came to bat. Jos Buttler and Alex Hales attacked from the very beginning and didn’t allow India to settle in. They scored 170 runs for the opening wicket and completed the chase in just 16 overs. India’s bowlers had been left without answers. Crucially, the game highlighted the difference in how both sides played T20 cricket.
For many years, India’s approach in T20 cricket had been built around stability. The top order had focussed on innings building before launching at the death. The method had worked for a long time, but by 2022, the game had moved on. Teams were attacking from the start and emphasising on risk taking in the powerplay. The semi-final defeat made that gap clear.
The defeat led to a change in India’s white-ball ideology. The batters were encouraged to bat with more freedom, especially in the powerplay and focus shifted from preserving wickets to taking on the bowling from the word go.
Batters with innovation and power-hitting ability were preferred, and captain Rohit Sharma led from the front in the renewed approach, sacrificing personal milestones for the team and taking on the bowlers from the word go.
“The nature of batsmanship in white-ball cricket over the last 10 years or so, everything had started to change. In some ways, there was a feeling that we were slightly behind, and we needed to get better at that. We needed to push the envelope a little bit more. We needed to take a few more risks. Run-rates were going up,” Rahul Dravid, the head coach between 2021 and 2024, said at an event recently.
In a way, the Adelaide match was a turning point for India. It was a reality check for them, and they had to change their strategy in white-ball cricket.
It’s not easy to win matches in knockout competitions, but sometimes you learn from losses more than from wins. The semi-final match against England was one of those matches for India, and it was a hard knock on the road to success for them.
For a long time, India’s T20 cricket was all about stability in the batting order. The openers had concentrated on building the innings and then taking on the opposition in the later stages of the match. This had been their strategy for a long time, and it had been successful, but in 2022, the game had changed. The teams had to attack from the beginning and focus on taking risks in the powerplay. India were about to join the pack and become the new leaders in white-ball cricket.
