Good teams are built around a few good men, great cricket teams around 11 great cricketers.
At Dubai on Sunday, India reaffirmed what fans have believed for some time now: It is the greatest cricket team in white ball cricket. And the 11 Men in Blue are among the best that have come together as a band of marauders, raiders and entertainers in many years. The greatness of this team is beyond doubt: it has reached the finals of the last three ICC events, won two of them, and has lost just one match of the 23 played at these premium events.
If you thought losing 15 tosses in a row has a probability of something around 15,000, how about calculating the probability of winning non-stop at the world’s biggest stage. If that’s not greatness, we need to find it on Mars. The final was a reaffirmation of Indian prowess with the bat and the ball, an exhibition of courage, calm and craft, and a stark reminder that other teams have a lot to catch up.
The mark of a victorious team is that its opponents try to copy its template and hope that they’d beat it at its own game. That mark was visible in both the knock-out games when Australia and New Zealand packed their teams with spinners and tried to blaze away in the first powerplay. For both Australia and New Zealand the hit-while-it-is-hot strategy worked, but only briefly. Once the spinners came on, the top was prised open, and the attacking style of batting was forced to take refuge in dot balls and singles.
While chasing, India showed what Virendra Sehwag once said of Sachin Tendulkar: Baap, baap hota hai, beta, beta. So, India got off to flying starts, managed the middle overs better, and just when the match seemed headed for a tight finish, unleashed the calm of KL Rahul and the pyrotechnics of Pandya. Ergo, not one match reached the final over.
India have been good in white ball cricket since the 80s. Occasionally they have been mediocre–under Mohd Azharuddin in the early 90s and then when India was rebuilding after the fixing scandal. But, there are two well-defined eras of greatness.
One, when Sehwag, Sachin, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Rahul Dravid formed the core of the batting that was suddenly elevated to the next level by the addition of MS Dhoni. Yet, tragically, India lost the only world cup (2007) it played with this formidable five. And they didn’t just lose it, they were humiliated in the opening round, flying home after just three matches. That team was destined for greatness but cursed to extinction.
From those ashes rose another great team–the one that won the 2011 world cup. Back then, on the scale of greatness it was just marginally lower than the Class of 2007, primarily because Virat Kohli was still evolving, and the bowling unit had plenty of holes. Yet, it won the world cup because a few good men–Sachin, Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Zaheer Khan and Dhoni rose to greatness when they were asked to.
The team led by Rohit Sharma is a blend of 2007 and 2011–and that’s why it is perhaps the greatest in Indian white ball history. It has formidable batters, excellent bowlers, and–this is what separates it from the others–11 great guys who step up every time it is required. You need to look no further than the Champions Trophy for proof of this rare ability–in every match, a different set of players took India to victory.
India needs to celebrate not just the victory in Dubai. It needs to bow down to these men who have reached the pinnacle of both capability and achievement. They are, without doubt, the real champions.
(By arrangement with Perspective Bytes)
