The Indian team is trying to “push the limits” of what they can do. According to assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate, they are doing this in order to be well-prepared for the challenges in the next 18 months: the Champions Trophy, Asia Cup and T20 World Cup.
With Rohit Sharma as captain and Rahul Dravid as coach, India had shed their safety-first approach with bat in limited-overs cricket. It paid dividends when they finished as the runners-up of the 2023 ODI World Cup and the winners of the 2024 T20 World Cup.
Now Suryakumar Yadav has replaced Rohit as T20I captain and Gautam Gambhir has taken over as coach, but the template has remained the same. In the first T20I against Bangladesh in Gwalior, India chased down 128 in 11.5 overs. Then, batting first in Delhi, they found themselves on 41 for 3 inside the powerplay. But Nitish Kumar Reddy and Rinku Singh only momentarily took their foot off the pedal and powered India to 221 for 9.
“Hundred per cent,” ten Doeschate said, when asked if playing fearless cricket was part of the team philosophy. “I think it has shown in the way we have played. The Test match in Kanpur is a great example.”
In that second Test in Kanpur, rain and a wet outfield allowed only 35 overs across the first three days. But India’s attacking approach with the bat meant they won with more than one session to spare.
“We are trying to push the limits of what we can do as a team,” ten Doeschate said. “We have obviously got the quality to do it. And then it’s about giving the players the belief to do it in a safe space, that if it’s not going to go right, it’s also okay. And even if you look back at the first two games, someone like Sanju [Samson] getting a quick start in the first game in Gwalior, it would have been easy for him to knock it around and just get a 50-60 not out. But you can see he was trying to push the boundary. He knows the state of the game, and the messaging has been pretty consistent with that.
“We want the guys to expand their game. We want to move cricket forward, like it’s going with the times. And we want to be prepared for the big crunch moments that are coming up in the next 18 months.”
Another change since Gambhir became the coach has been the push to make as many players in the side bowl. In the second T20I, despite Hardik Pandya not rolling his arm over, India used seven bowlers, with each picking up at least one wicket.
“You see the way the game is going, it’s very rare that all five bowlers, or even six bowlers, are going to go well on a given day,” ten Doeschate said. “So it’s nice to have options. Ideally, you want them to bowl a little bit more, but someone like Hardik not bowling in the last game, it’s just a testament to the depth of the bowling in the team.”
India fielded the same XI in the first two T20Is. But now with the series sealed, they are likely to try their bench strength.
“That was always the plan,” ten Doeschate said. “Obviously, there’s a nice depth in the squad – a lot of guys have the IPL experience. We are trying to expose as many guys as we can to international experience with what we have coming up. So someone like Harshit Rana, we are keen to give a game to. Obviously, Tilak [Varma] came into the squad a bit later. Jitesh [Sharma] is there as well. We want to give Sanju another chance. So there are options.”
The third and final T20I will be played in Hyderabad, where the average run rate in IPL 2024 was 10.54. But ten Doeschate said India would not blindly trust the data.
“Certainly the data and the evidence is around that [a high-scoring game]. But a little bit like when we got to Delhi the other day, you don’t want to read too much into the data. We probably feel that those first three wickets we lost was maybe because of going a little too hard. The wicket was a little bit sticky.
“So we will have a look at this wicket. We are aware of the high-scoring nature of this pitch during the IPL but also we are five months away from the IPL now. So conditions could change as well. Fingers crossed, it’s a high-scoring game and a quality game.”
