India's T20 World Cup squad: Spin and pace aces, young guns hold the key

Not without reason is it said that picking an Indian cricket team, any Indian cricket team, is the most thankless job in the sport. When the team selected is for a tournament as prestigious as the T20 World Cup, it is inevitable that the nearly billion-plus cricket followers will all have an opinion because in India especially, when it comes to cricket, everyone is a super selector.

All told Ajit Agarkar’s selection panel has got most things right. Admittedly, there is no designated or pedigreed finisher in the mix. Rinku Singh can count himself desperately unlucky to miss out, but he has only faced 82 deliveries for Kolkata Knight Riders and his closest competitor, Shivam Dube, has made the most of batting at No. 4 for Chennai Super Kings. Beyond that, it’s hard to fault the logic of the selection committee, especially with Virat Kohli reiterating his credentials with 500 impressive runs at a strike-rate in the 147s.

Young guns

Selectors globally are loath to go with promise, potential and performances alone, no matter how spectacular, in any World Cup. A case can be made for the inclusion of such dynamic forces as Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma and Shashank Singh, maybe even Riyan Parag. But who do these young, largely untested guns come in for? Can Abhishek, for instance, win the nod ahead of Yashasvi Jaiswal, coming off 700 runs in the Test series against England and who boasts an impressive T20 record for the country? Can Tilak supplant Suryakumar Yadav, the world’s No. 1 T20 batsman? Does Shashank realistically stand a chance after half an other-worldly season in the IPL? And should Parag’s rich vein of early form in this IPL – he has tapered off a little in recent times – be reason enough to throw him into the deep end as India extend their quest for their first global title since 2013? The answers, one supposes, are obvious.

The only time India went in with a team of promise was at the inaugural T20 World Cup, in South Africa in 2007. T20 was in its infancy, India had played just one international fixture at the time, and the three big batting guns, skipper Rahul Dravid and his two immediate predecessors, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar respectively, had made themselves unavailable for the tournament. After the summer meltdown in the 50-over World Cup in the Caribbean, few expected India to make a splash in a format that had yet to catch the imagination in most parts of the world, and definitely so in India. At the time, 20-over cricket was a hit-and-giggle routine, much like how India had viewed One-Day Internationals until their dramatic triumph at the 1983 World Cup.

Out of compulsion, more than anything else, Dilip Vengsarkar’s selection committee was forced to look for a new captain. Fortunately, its search stopped with Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The rest, as they say, is history.

Experience with youth

But despite the absence of the celebrated batting troika, India weren’t a team of greenhorns. Dhoni apart, there were Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Dinesh Karthik to shore up the batting. S Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh were the bowling spearheads alongside Irfan Pathan and RP Singh, with the experienced Agarkar on the bench. There was a sprinkling of fresh blood – Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Joginder Sharma, Irfan Pathan – but there was no dearth of familiarity with the pulls and pressures of international cricket though for obvious reasons, their dalliance with the T20 version was miniscule.

The IPL has made India the home of 20-over cricket currently, even though the national side hasn’t been able to emulate its success of 2007. Like always, the decision-makers – among them 2007 titlists Rohit and Agarkar – believe this time around too that they have assembled the best 15 to mount a successful campaign. The balance in the side adds credence to that belief, though a studied investment in the tried and tested might suggest that India are hoping for a different result with the same personnel.

Rohit's aggression

Rohit, more than anyone else, has shown in the last year that it’s never too late to learn new tricks. His sustained aggression while opening the batting in the 50-over home World Cup last winter has become a template of sorts; with even fewer overs to contend with, Rohit has been furiously aggressive in the IPL and even though Mumbai Indians are just one place above the foot of the table, his intent and intensity have been unmistakable.

Some of it has rubbed off on Kohli too. In some ways, given their stature and where they are at in their careers, Rohit and Kohli have become a package deal – pick one, and you are under great pressure to pick the other, too. Kohli has made the job of the selection group easier with his exploits for bottom-placed Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Like it has for a while now, India’s batting will revolve around these two stalwarts, but the muscular middle-order presence of Suryakumar, Dube, Hardik Pandya and the remarkable Rishabh Pant will ensure it won’t be about Rohit and Kohli alone.

Sanju and Pant

Sanju Samson’s mellifluous stroke-making and a hitherto unrevealed maturity have been rewarded with a maiden World Cup selection. The Kerala right-hander, who bats at No. 3 for Rajasthan Royals, beat back a fierce challenge from KL Rahul but he might have to bide his time to break into the playing XI, given how crisply Pant is striking the ball and how pressing the need is for muscle at No. 5 and below, where Samson’s versatility (or the lack of it) hasn’t been tested yet.

Pandya and Dube, with their medium pace, can back up the specialist fast-bowling trio of the peerless Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, and Arshdeep Singh. But in a clear indication of how they think the pitches in the US and the Caribbean will behave, India have invested heavily in spin – two attacking wrist-spinners in Kuldeep Yadav and back-in-favour Yuzvendra Chahal, two left-arm finger spinners in Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, both of whom can score attractive and quick runs anywhere in the batting order. Chahal’s recall after eight months, particularly, has to be seen as an aggressive move with an eye on bossing the middle overs through wickets, not economy, though how Rohit and head coach Rahul Dravid will fit both in the playing XI without compromising on batting firepower is open to question.