It has been less than a month since the Men in Blue capped an invincible run at the T20 World Cup with silverware and ended their 11-year-old ICC trophy drought on a drizzly afternoon at the Kensington Oval in Barbados. As the players shed tears of joy and shook their legs to Bhangra on the land of the Caribbean calypso, a nation rejoiced to the fullest.
However, much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Captain Rohit Sharma, talisman batter Virat Kohli and star all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja have all called it a day from the shortest format. A Zimbabwe T20 series followed in a trice and a young squad under Shubman Gill sailed through with a 4-1 victory.
Rahul Dravid passed on the mantle of coaching duties to his former teammate Gautam Gambhir, and the latter’s term began with a bolt from the blue — Suryakumar Yadav was anointed the captain of the T20I team for the Sri Lanka series over World Cup vice-captain Hardik Pandya. With eyes set on the 2026 T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, the defending champion has hit the reset button, and a host of players will now fight it out over the next two years to fill the holes left by the seniors as well as stake claim for other positions. As the Suryakumar-Gambhir era in T20Is begins in Sri Lanka later this month, the vast pool of players offers them scope for as many permutations and combinations as there.
The traffic at the top
Having to replace two legends of the game at the top order in one go might not be an easy task for many teams. For India, however, with as many as four players putting their hands up already for the two available spots, the dilemma is in fact to fit all of them into the scheme of things and then pick the best two. In Yashasvi Jaiswal, Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Abhishek Sharma, India has four openers who have a T20I century against their name.
The Zimbabwe series and the squad for the Sri Lanka series, however, show that Gill and Jaiswal clearly have their nose ahead. Jaiswal, who warmed the bench for a month in the Caribbean and the USA, has a T20I career strike-rate of over 160 and can don Rohit’s all-out attack role and set the tone early in the PowerPlay. In Gill, the team sees a bankable batter and a future captain. His sudden elevation as the vice-captain of both the white ball squads, overtaking seniors like Rishabh Pant in T20Is and K.L. Rahul and Shreyas Iyer in ODIs, shows the management’s faith in the prodigy on the rise.
For a stylish Ruturaj, who came second in the Orange Cap race in IPL 2024 and a flamboyant Abhishek, who hit 42 sixes — the most by any batter in the season — the omissions from the Sri Lanka tour squad can be a tough pill to swallow. But if there comes a need, both batters have shown that they can fit into the role perfectly. Abhishek, with his handy left-arm orthodox spin as a secondary skill, is especially a tantalising option for the management to add more flexibility to the playing XI.
Core intact
The middle-order core of Pant, Suryakumar, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya and Sanju Samson remains intact from the World Cup even as Rinku Singh makes his return to the squad from the reserves and Riyan Parag gets his reward for a breakout domestic and IPL season. With Pant at No. 3 and captain Suryakumar at No. 4, India will look to continue with the left-right combination that brought success in the World Cup.
While Pant has proven to be a reliable enforcer to walk in even at the loss of an early wicket in the PowerPlay, Suryakumar, the second-ranked batter in the format, has been the disruptor who throws opposition tactics out of gear with his pyrotechnics and all-round strokeplay.
Though Dube, the specialist spin-hitter, wasn’t at his fluent best in the World Cup, he is still a beast with the willow on Indian pitches and a part-time medium-pace option, if needed.
However, he will have to be on his toes to make the spot his own as fellow southpaw Rinku, who was edged out by him from the World Cup squad, has not put a foot wrong in his 20-match-old T20I career and boasts an enviable strike rate of 176 at an average of 83.2.
After carving out a dream redemption arc at the World Cup by ending up as one of the most valuable players for the team, Hardik now finds himself without a leadership role. He will, however, continue to hold sway over the team’s combinations as a finisher with the bat and a third seamer with the ball.
While Samson and Parag add heft to the middle-order, the likes of Dhruv Jurel, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Sai Sudarshan wait on the fringes to get into the reckoning.
The spin stocks
The World Cup spin-trio of Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Jadeja needs reinforcement after the latter’s retirement.
In the Zimbabwe series, India assigned the role to Washington Sundar, and he took the opportunity with both hands as he finished as the Player-of-the-Series with eight scalps in five matches at an economy of just over five. The Tamil Nadu all-rounder, who has been plagued by injuries and a victim of the Impact Player rule in the IPL that cut down his playing time, adds the missing off-spinning all-rounder dimension to the team.
While spin spearhead Kuldeep has bamboozled batters ever since he found a second wind in his sails, left-armer Axar has shown that he is the man for crises with both bat and ball. Ravi Bishnoi, the No. 1 bowler in the format just months before the World Cup, after being overlooked for seasoned campaigner Yuzvendra Chahal, now finds himself back in the mix even as Chahal misses out. Mystery spinner Varun Chakaravarthy, the second highest wicket-taker in IPL 2024, and left-arm spinner R. Sai Kishore, a proven performer in the domestic circuit over the years, could also get a look-in at some point.
The pace battery
As India, like any other team in the world, will look to wrap “national treasure” Jasprit Bumrah in cotton wool and not play him in every bilateral series, several pacers are waiting in the wings of the team to prove themselves. While Arshdeep Singh, the joint highest wicket-taker in the T20 World Cup, and Mohammed Siraj are expected to lead the attack in Bumrah’s absence, the likes of Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan and Mukesh Kumar will have to pull out all stops to secure a spot.
With Chennai Super Kings medium-pacer Tushar Deshpande given his debut in the Zimbabwe series and Kolkata Knight Riders’ aggressive pacer Harshit Rana inducted into the ODI squad for the Sri Lanka series, the options are aplenty for the management in this department as well.
As the sun sets on the emerald island of Sri Lanka on June 27, the dawn of the SKY era will break in T20Is for India. Can another Mumbaikar herald a new chapter in the shortest format and lead the defending champion to global glory in two years? Can Gambhir wield his IPL magic wand in international cricket? Only time will tell.
