AHMEDABAD: THE team's original No. 4 making runs as an opener (Shubman Gill). The team's reserve No. 4 becoming the enforcer in the middle-overs (Shreyas Iyer). The team's first XIth hour replacement potentially taking the new ball (Harshit Rana). A player in the original 15 likely to start on the bench (Arshdeep Singh) The team's second XIth hour replacement potentially figuring in the first choice XI (Varun Chakravarthy). The team's original opener watching the Champions Trophy on TV (Yashasvi Jaiswal). The team's first-choice non-travelling pacer deemed not worthy of taking the new ball (Mohammed Siraj). A pacer fresh from a long-term injury entrusted with the task of picking new-ball wickets (Mohammed Shami). Five spinners... FIVE. Zero left-handers in the top four, the only top-order at the Champions Trophy with such a skewed squad construction...
... forget the fact that India did manage to sweep the series against England. Their muddled planning and XIth hour replacements for the Champions Trophy has shown a team management caught in two minds. They have actively pivoted from from one strategy to a totally different one inside a month. When they initially named the side for the Champions Trophy in January, they plumped for Jaiswal's attributes as an opener even though he had never played in the format. One Shreyas innings -- admittedly a match-shifting one — changed Jaiswal's role from opening the batting to water-carrier to now not even making the airport. You can make a case for saying the right decision was reached — on numbers alone, he has been one of the best enforcers through the middle-overs over the last two years or so — but that's the kind of reactive decision-making teams generally avoid.
If Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma and Co. wanted a left-right combination at the selection meeting, one innings shouldn't have been able to change that mindset. Or were they already flip-flopping over their decision to pick Jaiswal? "We picked Jaiswal on the basis of what he has shown in the last few months despite not playing ODI cricket," Rohit had said when the preliminary CT squad was announced. "He has been picked on potential and sometimes you have to do that... you try and make the best team to win games in different situations and I feel with these guys you can have that." If Jaiswal was picked on 'potential', 'what he has shown in the last few months' and on a 'feeling of him being in the best team', him being dropped feels like a kneejerk reaction. At best.
It's clear that the team management doesn't rate Arshdeep the ODI bowler as much as they rate his skills in the shortest format. But they picked the left-armer because of his death-overs nuance. "We are not sure of (Jasprit) Bumrah and so we picked a squad where we had options of players who can bowl up front and at the back end," Rohit added in the same press conference in January. "If Bumrah is not there, we wanted Arshdeep to do it."
So why was the 26-year-old sat on the bench in the first two ODIs if the role for him was to ape Bumrah's in case of the latter's unavailability? Considering the original plan was to leave Harshit behind, why has he enjoyed more gametime than the left-armer?
On a good batting surface at Ahmedabad on Wednesday, Shreyas once again displayed his prowess as a boundary-hitter through the middle overs; he has become India's answer to what the likes of Daryl Mitchell and Aiden Markram do for New Zealand and South Africa respectively. Since the beginning of 2023, he strikes at 114.68 (best for a No. 4) and hits a four or a six once every 7.3 deliveries, putting him in the elite bracket.
Yet, only Virat Kohli's swollen knee in the series opener kept the incumbent in his rightful place, a happy accident if ever there was one. "You know what you want me to say," he had said when asked about Jaiswal potentially starting ahead of him in Nagpur. "But I'm going to keep it low-key and cherish this moment, the victory today."
It's true. Wins by a margin of four wickets and 68 balls (Nagpur), four wickets and 33 balls (Cuttack) and 142 runs (Ahmedabad) over by and large a first-choice England set-up is worthy of praise. Their performances in all three games have been clinical, a degree of ruthless professionalism one usually tends to associate with champion teams. Apart from the start of England's batting in all three games, India have lorded over their opponents in all three primary skillsets.
Performance wise, Sharma & Co. couldn't have asked for a better tune-up to the Champions Trophy. Yet, their planning and squad construction has left room for more questions than answers.
Brief scores: India 356 in 50 ovs (Shubman Gill 112, Virat Kohli 52, Shreyas Iyer 78, Adil Rashid 4/64) bt England 214 in 34.2 ovs (Tom Banton 38; Arshdeep Singh 2/33, Harshit Rana 2/31, Axar Patel 2/22).