CHENNAI: As India beat Zimbabwe by 72 runs to set up a virtual quarterfinal clash against West Indies in Kolkata on Sunday, one of the key positives from the match for the defending champions was the way their batters expressed themselves. It is the brand of aggressive cricket India had shown for the 18 months before the T20 World Cup.
However, since their early collapse in the first game against the USA, India have been on the backfoot both on the field and mentally. Tilak Varma would admit as much later on. Abhishek Sharma had three ducks, Tilak and Suryakumar Yadav were struggling against spinners, going into a shell after early wickets. And it is something they wanted to change before the Zimbabwe game.
Head coach Gautam Gambhir and the team management spoke about it with the team as they watched videos of past batting. And it helped that Chennai offered the best batting surface they have had so far. Put it all together, every Indian batter had a strike of 160 or more as they posted 254 runs. Tilak himself smashed an unbeaten 44 from 16 balls as India went on to post the biggest total of this T20 World Cup and India’s highest in any edition of the tournament.
“We discussed yesterday, just before the game, that we will go with a good mindset. We have seen our past year of T20 cricket, how we played. After seeing that video, everyone got our confidence and that's what we discussed as a team, as we will just enjoy and put the smile on and go all out,” Tilak said in the post-match press conference.
When asked if this was the best batting surface they had so far, Tilak said the pitches in Ahmedabad and New Delhi were good, but the batters went into a shell. “This game is such a funny game. Your mindset is very important. I think we had a little mindset that we will wait and play and if a wicket falls. Personally, I was thinking that if the wicket is bad, then I will take 2-3 balls. So, in that, we had a little mindset. So, we were discussing that we will enjoy our game. If the first ball is there, then we will hit and put fear in the minds of bowlers. That is what we wanted today and thankfully, Sanju gave us a good start. We want to carry forward the intensity to the next game,” said Tilak.
Although it might feel like a batter talking after a massive win, the game plan for India seem to be clear. This is the brand of cricket they want to play and the pitches they prefer to play on. Arshdeep Singh would later explain how the bowlers are happy to go for runs and do the dirty work as long as batters enjoy themselves and bat like they did on Thursday. “As long as our batters are enjoying batting on that wicket, we are more than happy. If we go for runs, it's not a problem. The way our gameplay has been for the past two years, we score a lot and try to defend it. So as long as we keep getting wickets where the batters can play freely, because we play batting up to No 8. So as long as they get that freedom from the wickets and they can make runs freely, we are more than happy to do the dirty job and that's it,” Arshdeep said.
When asked about their plan for West Indies in Kolkata, Tilak said that they will assess the pitch and bat accordingly but the intent will remain.
“We will know after a few balls how the pitch is behaving, what kind of score we can put up. But at the same point, we want to play fearless cricket, the brand of cricket we played today and the way we played since last year, the same intent we want to keep in the next game as well. If the wicket is not good, then we will adjust and we will keep that intensity on,” said Tilak.