Cricket now has three world championships, one for each format – Tests, ODIs, and T20s. Each country has to carefully select its best flying formation for each format, with these World Cups/Championships in mind.
India is no different. The BCCI carefully plans these three squads through its Selection Committee. With the retirement of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli from international T20s, the BCCI has fast-tracked younger players into international cricket. The BCCI has focused on players I like to call “T20 natives” – those who have been born into white-ball T20 cricket as their main priority. Just as we call the current millennials “digital natives” – with everything digital coming naturally to them as their first option – the current T20 team is full of players most comfortable with T20 as a format.
There are many exciting players in the mix – Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Tilak Varma, Sai Sudharsan, Mayank Yadav, and Ruturaj Gaikwad, to name a few. What is heartening to me is that there are three all-rounders in the list I mention, or rather, batters who can bowl.
It is crucial for the balance and strength of a white-ball cricket team to have at least two batters in their top five who can bowl a few overs. This provides great stability to the team and offers the captain more options to adapt to the demands of a particular pitch or target weaknesses in the opposition’s batting through a combination of pace and spin. In the last three to four years, India have not had this luxury, which has handicapped them to a certain extent. Looking ahead, it will be important for India to continue finding batters who can bowl with a degree of skill and guile. Riyan Parag is a case in point.
Now, moving on to how India will prepare for the medium-term in ODIs. I believe that much of the same group of T20 players I mentioned earlier will form the nucleus of the ODI team, as I feel Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will also ease themselves out of this format sooner rather than later. Once again, the need in the ODI format is for all-rounders. There is one major search currently across all three formats, and that is for Hardik Pandya’s replacement. Shivam Dube is being tried out for this role, and we hope he succeeds. He certainly has the talent, but will need to improve in the field.
For Test cricket, the BCCI will be hoping that some of India’s young talents, like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Sai Sudharsan, and Ruturaj Gaikwad, feel the desire and urge to play red-ball cricket for India, as Test cricket is the founding format of this great game. From media reports, most of these young players are very keen to play Test cricket, and that bodes well for India. The BCCI has always emphasised that Test cricket is their highest priority, and I believe this message has been communicated to the younger players. I also feel Virat Kohli has played a significant role in this, as he has always been vocal about his love for Test cricket.
India currently has the problem of plenty, with so many young players coming through domestic cricket and the IPL. The challenge now is to turn this fortunate situation into long-term dominance in world cricket.
The author is a former Indian cricketer and founder of KheloMore. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
Comments
0 comment