Their bats did all the talking there
Perth : India’s Rohit Sharma, left, and team mate Virat Kohli speak during their one day international cricket match against Australia in Perth, Australia.
In nearly every media interaction on this tour, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni repeatedly kept referring to the side’s previous tour to Australia, spread across late 2014 and early 2015. He spoke of the trip in a loud and emphatic way, emphasing on how he trusted and backed his players to deliver in due course, even though they were being wound down by the hosts, first in the winless tri-series, and then later in the World Cup semifinals.
The nucleus of the side was more or less the same, and they were expected to offer considerable challenge, if not beat, the hosts. But they dramatically wilted every time they spotted the canary yellow jersey. It seemed some kind of a mental block, as they buckled down to the eventual, and deserving, world champions.
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But no longed let it be said so. Though the whitewash came in the shortest form, and half a dozen of their protagonists not in the frame, beating Australia 3-0 at home is no inferior feat. The manner in which they achieved it surely shouldn’t be cast aside as an aberration.
Nothing exemplified this as the lethal approach their batsmen embraced. It’s hard to recollect any overseas pair of batsmen that has unleashed as much fury on their bowlers as Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in both formats, man of the series in ODIs and T20s respectively. It was like no matter how you bowl or who your bowlers are, either of them will hurt you, and sometimes both. They might have been beneficiaries of uniformly flat wickets and a set of bowlers who didn’t bother much to stretch the speedo’s limits, but sustaining such consistency and domination throughout the trip is something they can truly be proud of. And this they managed mostly with breathtaking but refined strokes.
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They might have lost the ODI series 4-1, but not without putting on respectable batting shows, far better than most other Indian line-ups on these shores. More than mere respectable perhaps, as thrice they surged past 300. Prior to them posting 309 for three in Perth, no other Indian team had crossed 300 before against the hosts in their backyard. In all they racked up a staggering body of 1521 runs and six hundreds (and a brace of 90s). And on most instances, India were in the hunt till perhaps the last three-four overs.
Milestone hunting myth
A major, almost cynical, criticism was that many of the batsmen showed a tendency to slow down when approaching milestones (they are not the first ones to cop with similar criticism), and hence they couldn’t quite accelerate the scoring and lift India’s tally to somewhere in the 340-350 region. But it owed much to their sedate starts than late-over flourish.
Then they reached the crescendo in the T20s. Sharma kept on scoring prolifically, Kohli found a sixth gear. And a change in bowling personnel gave Dhoni the ammo he had sought at the beginning of the tour. Suddenly, the travails of 2015 seem far away.
But Dhoni, rather than soaking in the honour of being the first Indian skipper to win two series in Australia, sees the bigger picture. “It’s more about how the team is looking rather than looking at it just as a captain. It’s more important to look at the bigger picture. What looks good is Jasprit Bumrah as a player with potential. He’s looking really good and even today (Sunday) he bowled the yorkers well. And I’ve always said that to be successful in the shorter format you have to execute the yorkers. Whether you choose to bowl it or not is up to you, but if you don’t have that option, then definitely at some point of time, you will be under pressure,” he pointed out.
That seasoned hands Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina re-asserted their stakes with timely cameos give India an assurance it had lacked hitherto. And Dhoni aptly summed up their show: “I don’t think so many runs have been scored by batsmen in eight back-to-back matches. It shows they are hungry for runs. They want to score in every match. We emphasise that if you are in good form you have to finish the games off. The first 50 runs are for yourself, the rest are for the team. Yes we lost ODIs 4-1 and won the T20s 3-0, but we know that when we come here the next time not only will we look forward to it as a team, but the spectators will look forward to us too because over the eight matches we have entertained them,” he pointed out.
Focus on T20 WC
The winning feeling has yet to sink in, but the focus will invariably shift to preparing the T20 World Cup. Bowling would still be a slight concern, though the extra fielder outside the 30-yard circle cushioned them in the T20s. “The bowling department was a bit of concern, not the spinners, but the medium pacers. Even in the ODIs, there were lot of instances where at times you feel a bit helpless as to what could be done at that point of time. Because execution is something that is very important. But at the same time, I would like to say that in this T20 format, they get that extra fielder outside and they know that the batsmen are looking to go after them to they can use variations from the start,” Dhoni said.
The bowling, as of now, looks settled and India will have further opportunities to experiment in the three-match T20 series against Sri Lanka, followed by the Asia Cup in Bangladesh. He hinted there could be one or two changes before he chalks down the eleven for the T20 World Cup, but it’s less likely that there would be any radical shifts. And after a long time, they will return home from Down Under ot battered, but with heads held high.
