In 2007, it was a young Indian team that lifted the World Cup in South Africa, and with it the began a new era in India's cricket history. The country immediately accepted the new, shorter T20 format and India's success in it only helped spread it. With the inception of the Indian Premier League the face of cricket was changed as Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket once did, and T20 became a format of cricket that was not only followed and adored by just the cricket fanatics but by one and all in India as it mixed Bollywood and cricket and brought out a product filled with glitz, glamour and entertainment that was just irresistible for the Indian audience.
Now more than 4 years since then, after 4 editions of the IPL and 3 editions of the CLT20, India is definitely a country well known for it's association with T20 cricket and every loss is somehow blamed on the T20 format and it's lucrative nature. However in the entire process the Indian national team who won the inaugural edition of the T20 World Cup has been faring quite badly in it and are currently ranked 7 in the world.
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Surprisingly the Indian team's performance has deteriorated and is very sub-standard in a format where one would expect them to perform well. In a hit and miss format of the game where being the better team and playing better cricket will not always result in a win, India have done a decent job winning a little more than 50% of all their International game still date. In 32 matches (including the T20 match at Sydney on Wednesday), India has won 16 and lost 14. Not figures that reflect brilliance from the Indian T20 team but still decent enough. However since the World Cup in the 23 matches, India has won less than 50% of their matches.
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This period includes two atrocious performance by India in the two T20 World Cup tournaments (2009 in England and 2010 in the West Indies) where India won only 4 of their 10 games. The figures only get worse when mentioned that those 4 wins, 3 were against Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ireland. So out of the 20 games India has played T20 against test playing nations (Zimbabwe included) since the 2007 World Cup triumph, India has won only 7 out of 20 matches. That is a low win percentage of just 35%. So the failure of the Indian team in T20s is there in the open for all to see.
Now this is the last thing you'd expect from a country that is so fond of the T20 format and one in which their players enjoy playing at least 2 months every year and something that has me bemused. So taking the task of trying to crack this interesting case of India's dismissal performance in International T20s, I've come up with a few possible reasons for the failure.
Before England won the World Cup under Paul Collingwood, the most common excuse the English press offered for their team's repeated failures in the shortest format of the game was that the team still hadn't come to terms with the 'new version' of cricket. This was a lame excuse as the English cricket scene was one of the first to witness the T20 format and was immediately inducted into their domestic structure. The Twenty20 Cup competition was started in 2003 itself. Cricket boards from other countries followed suit only later. So the cricketers were well accustomed with T20 cricket and their failures were due to other factors. The same applies to the Indian team with almost every single player in it having played in the IPL and being experienced campaigners in this particular form.
So what are the reasons then? To begin with, I feel the problem perhaps can be with the way International T20s are viewed. It is not seen at the same level as test or ODI cricket and I don't blame anyone for that, because I strongly believe that test cricket is the highest form of cricket. However this devaluation of this particular format perhaps makes the players take it lightly. I certainly hope this isn't the case as representing your country is the highest honor for any sportsperson, but I do have the nagging feel that some players do not consider this serious cricket and this a worry.
Also another reason might be that India and all teams all over the world generally tend to use the T20 format to test out new talent in the international circuit before bringing him in for the ODIs or the test formats. T20 is seen as sort of a probation period for testing young talent and generally the senior players are rested for these matches. There is hence an obvious difference in the quality, and especially in a team like India, it is quite difficult to transform from the domestic level to the international level. Though this has been minimized to a large extent thanks to the exposure players get in the IPL, there still remains that unknown factor. India generally tends to test their bench strengths in T20s in preparation for an upcoming ODI series and this again goes hand in hand with the fact that T20s are devalued and hence seen more as a testing ground.
Consistency is the key in any sport and it forms the backbone of a winning team. This is one thing that is definitely lacking in the Indian T20 team and the numbers reflect that. Unlike in tests where India generally win all home series and struggle abroad, the case with T20s is that India have been losing everywhere. This can be attributed to the inconsistency in the selection of the team because India seldom plays the same T20. In India's last two T20s, there have been 4 changes in the playing eleven and this does affect to a certain level. Also since India views T20 as testing ground for fostering new talent, the unpredictability of the performance of a newcomer also is a factor. In the West Indies during the World Cup we saw the young team peppered with a barrage of short deliveries which they couldn't handle due to lack in technique and this serves as a lovely learning experience for the youngsters, but at what expense? Being kicked out of the prestigious tournament early? However like in any other format we have seen that though T20 cricket involves plenty of luck and is a 'hit and miss' format, the good teams perform consistently and win on a consistent basis. India haven't been doing that and rather have been consistent in 'missing'.
In the rankings India have less than half the points that the English team who lead it have. This certainly tells the tale of the rise of the English team and how from being a team who were languishing at the bottom, clueless about the format now are the number one team. Rankings speak very little in T20 cricket of course, but at the same time it cannot be ignored completely as it provides some perspective of how the teams stack up against each other. So being ranked 7th might mean little, but it also nevertheless a worrying flicker of the red alarm signal and it would be wise to heed to it, analyze the shortcomings and try to come up with a proper remedy.
This is surely not the agenda with the highest priority for the BCCI at the moment with the dismal performance of the Indian team in tests overseas, but I feel must be looked into nevertheless. This year there is a major International T20 tournament in Sri Lanka for the World Cup, and putting up a performance such as India did in the last two editions will definitely not reflect good on the team and also the board.
