NEW DELHI: The USA team wasn’t the only surprise package awaiting the Indian team in their opening game of the T20 World Cup last Saturday. The Wankhede square, which gripped and offered turn, was the bigger surprise. For a team that came into the tournament eyeing a 300-plus score, the excruciating struggle to post 161/9 against an ICC Associate Member must have hurt some egos.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!It is learnt that that the Indian team management has made its displeasure known to the Indian cricket board (BCCI) about the nature of the pitch in the game against USA. It’s early in the tournament and the pressure of defending a World Cup title at home must be immense. The pitch, on top of that, has challenged India’s planning for the World Cup.
Not long ago, during the home series against South Africa in Dec, the team management was forced to take a step back and set relatively moderate targets to avoid batting collapses. Whether on the sluggish pitches of the UAE during the Asia Cup in Sept or the lively tracks in Australia in Oct, India’s all-out aggressive brand of batting had been challenged. The bowlers were largely the protagonists of the wins in that period. This is when the team management decided to play bold, first by dropping vice-captain Shubman Gill and then by re-adopting the attack-at-all-cost approach. It defines head coach Gautam Gambhir’s T20 ethos. The results followed in the home series against New Zealand preceding the T20 World Cup. The only match that India dropped in the five-match series was in Vizag, where the ball appeared to grip the surface when India batted second.
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What should be India’s strategy moving forward in the T20 World Cup?
Going forward, India have matches in New Delhi, Colombo and Ahmedabad in the league matches. The square here at the Ferozeshah Kotla has a reputation of being a high-scoring one since 2023. The pitch has got rest only in the last three weeks after non-stop cricket since the last IPL. In Colombo, meanwhile, the pitches have appeared sluggish.TOI understands that India’s think-tank has a preference for high-scoring games. The awe-inspiring and record-shattering scores against New Zealand last month happened at venues that offered pitches as hard as concrete slabs and heavy dew that made the balls feel as if they were submerged in water.Dew, incidentally, hasn’t been a major factor yet in this early stage of the World Cup.“The pitch in Mumbai was a bit surprising. India should not get cautious if the pitches offer a bit of help for the bowlers. The team’s strength lies in its aggressive approach. Yes, they should also have alternate ways of scoring runs but they must not give up on the attacking game,” said former India cricketer Deep Dasgupta, adding, “The last game against USA was a classic example where caution was the last resort. If they run out of power-hitters, they can switch to a conservative approach. They have players with those skills, as they showed in the low-scoring Asia Cup. In T20s, sometimes all you need is four overs of momentum to swing the match in your favour. That can only happen with a positive mindset.”India’s comfort zone is highscoring games on belters, where they can bank on a formidable bowling lineup to restrict the opposition. But it is also true that in World Cups, very big totals have proven difficult to achieve. It’s up to the Indian team to take the pitch out of the equation.
