The (near) perfect World Cup campaign
An incredible Aussie performance lead to "travisty" as India's ICC trophy drought continues, but this is still the best ever Indian team.
Ordinary day for India barring the two powerplays
Going into the World Cup Final, India had been comfortably the best team. India scored quickly in the batting powerplay, didn’t lose wickets in the middle overs, and were solid batting first or chasing. The bowling took wickets early and didn’t concede too many runs, their pacers took wickets with seam and swing and both spinners looked in control even when they weren’t providing breakthroughs. Only 1 player in the XI didn’t have at least one outstanding day in the World Cup, and that was Suryakumar Yadav at number 6, although he came in for Hardik Pandya mid-way through the tournament and barely got a chance to bat. All in all, they had all bases covered and were definitely the favorites to lift the cup.
Unfortunately for India, only two of those things worked today. First, the Powerplay where, once again, thanks to Rohit Sharma’s brilliant 47 they got to 80/2 in the first 10 overs. As with other matches in this World Cup, it ensured that the run rate was hovering around 5 even when Australia took wickets and bowled well to stop KL Rahul and Virat Kohli from scoring quickly.
The only other thing that worked was early wickets with the ball. Although Bumrah and Shami conceded 41 in the first 4 overs (since they were trying an attacking line and length), they still managed to get 3 wickets in the first 7 overs. The decision to bowl Shami instead of Siraj with the new ball was an understandable one considering the form Shami had been in (and he got Warner’s wicket right away), but the wides he conceded showed he didn’t have the same control with the new ball as Siraj.
Apart from that though, nothing went to plan. India lost wickets regularly and were on the verge of not batting their full allotted quota. Their spinners didn’t bowl badly, but couldn’t quite break the partnership or keep things as tight as they would have wanted to with 241 on the board. And then the dew set in making batting a lot easier in the evening as Travis Head’s control % went from 69 in the Powerplay to lower 80% by the 25th over.
Defending a low total like this requires nearly everything going in the bowling team’s favor - half-chances need to be taken, batters need to edge the ball, and maybe even squeeze in a run-out or two. It just wasn’t meant to be, as Jasprit Bumrah bowled an incredible 2nd over to beat Travis Head multiple times, but he never found the edge. Even KL Rahul, who has had a wonderful WC behind the stumps, was having an off day today conceding extras.
Where Australia pulled ahead of hosts India
After making the right decision at the toss, Pat Cummins and his men took wickets consistently through India’s innings. Tactically the Aussies were spot on as they had very specific fields set for each batter such as a deep point in the first over to Rohit Sharma to not allow him to free his arms. They bowled with a lot of discipline and used the change of pace smartly on a slow surface to make run-scoring very hard. Thus far in the World Cup, the Indian team had scored 47% of their runs in overs 11-40 in boundaries. In this game, they were at just 7% with only 2 fours in those 30 overs.
Of course, the conditions matter too. This pitch wasn’t as easy to bat as the ones in Mumbai, Pune, or Bangalore. Nonetheless, that was an absolute beast of a performance from Australia to keep the Indian batters in check. A key piece of this was Australia’s fielding. They were quite outstanding on the field, right from the start saving runs as one would expect, but a key moment in the game was when Travis Head took an absolutely stunning catch to dismiss Rohit Sharma.
The batting performance today also explains why India started the World Cup with Shardul Thakur as the number 8 coming into the World Cup. Apart from his ability to break through partnerships with the ball, Shardul Thakur is a useful bat who can provide support to one of the top 6 batters in case of a situation like today. Although not playing him considering the past few performances makes complete sense, the absence of lower order batters forced the top order to not take any risks and contributed to the lack of boundaries and runs in that phase.
Why Virat Kohli is the best ODI batter since 2011?
Virat Kohli with a massive tally of 765 runs became the 1st man to win the Player of the Tournament award 3 times at an ICC tournament, when no other man has won it more than once. While the focus from India’s perspective will rightly be on the disappointment of not ending this campaign with a win, today’s knock reminded me once again what makes him so special in ODIs.
There’s a lot of focus on his incredible fitness, his ability to score 100s for fun, and his ability to score quickly in the last 10. The “how Kohli does it in ODIs” is often not talked about in as much detail outside of cricket nerds and statistic fans. Many top-order batters have strokes to score quickly in the Powerplay, and a number of them have the fitness to bat 50 overs, but barely anyone can compete with the way he manages the middle orders in a risk-free fashion. There are 74 batters since the start of 2011 who have scored 1500 or more runs between overs 11-40 in ODIs. Only 1 batter (AB de Villiers) has an average better than Virat Kohli.
With 5 fielders outside the circle, bowlers have an advantage in this phase, and so scoring boundaries is often the toughest in this phase. This makes strike rotation the key and Kohli has mastered this art. Even today, Kohli was 23 not out of 20 balls at the end of 10 overs and then made 31 off next 43 balls until his dismissal. A strike rate of 72 in that phase is obviously nowhere close to his usual SR of 94, but the batters at the other end were scoring at 58, and it shows how he is head and shoulders above the rest. This is the same role that Joe Root played for England, particularly leading up to the 2019 World Cup, and why Ross Taylor played a significant role in New Zealand’s ODI journey.
Can a team be the best in the world without winning the trophy?
If we look at the Win/Loss ratio for the major teams in ODIs since the start of 2011, India is well ahead of other teams. They have the best overall W/L, the best W/L away from home, and a ridiculous one in World Cups. In other words, India have been consistently the best ODI team irrespective of conditions. And yet in this time period, they have managed to win just 2 ICC trophies (2011 and Champions Trophy 2013) in 6 attempts.
With every World Cup or ICC trophy, there’s a debate on whether a team can be considered the best in the world if they don’t win it all. Some fans suggest that the Final should have an NBA or MLB-style “best-of-3” series like the CB Tri-Series held in Australia in the late 2000s used to have. This tweet by ESPNCricinfo’s Danyal Rasool on this topic summarizes it the best.
The World Cup knockouts are created in this manner since the people who market the game have realized that a knockout game generates far more interest than any other game. Also, this gives smaller teams (such as India in 1983) a chance to win it all. In fact, if you look at the history of the men’s World Cup since 1999 (except for 2003 and 2007), very rarely have the best teams of the time ended up also being the World Cup winners.
In 1999, South Africa and Pakistan were the best two teams, but Australia walked away with the title. India had plenty of loopholes in 2011 while in 2015, New Zealand had not dropped a match until the final. Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that the Indian teams across the last 10 years should have won at least a couple more ICC LOI trophies.
Some tough luck, and a couple of hours of excellent cricket by the opposition on one specific day doesn’t change the fact that the last decade, particularly 2016 onwards, has been the best era of ODI cricket for India. All the captains, coaches and selectors should be proud of the incredible talent pool that they have nurtered to make the current team the best in the world.