Last Sunday at Sydney Cricket Ground, the Indian team looked like lost souls, desperately seeking answers in the wrong places. Australia had won the ODI series and their batting had made several members of the visitors' bowling line-up pedestrian. It wasn't the most auspicious of starts to a full series Down Under.
Placed in that context, wresting the T20I series at the same venue a week later is perhaps the best tonic the team would have hoped for in the short term. Confidence has just not been regained, but they have shown that their spine is pretty good — even with the absence of Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah — for a tilt at the next year's T20 World Cup. The emergence of T Natarajan, whose 2/20 kept Australia under 200, as another seaming option is a further plus point.
Considering they last lost a T20 game 365 days ago — they have won 10 matches and four series since that reverse against West Indies on December 8 — they are on an imposing run.
Why are they, even if question marks persist about the lack of a sixth bowler and the middle-order being a touch featherweight, on this run?
Like so many previous instances in the last two years, it's a simple answer. Irrespective of whether they are setting a target or chasing, they like to preserve wickets, take the innings deep and reduce the contest to a mano confrontation with the bowlers at the death.
And when you have someone like Hardik Pandya, that strategy works more often than not. He's unlike most modern T20 greats. He's slight, isn't a 360-degree player and likes to play himself in. But what he does have is confidence and unnatural ability to clear the ropes anywhere in front of the wicket.
Under the SCG lights, he engineered a thrilling heist. Pandya walked in with the equation reading 75 off 38. When Kohli was gone, it was 46 from 23. Pandya, eight off six at that point, had seen enough. His next 16 balls had three fours, two sixes, four twos as well as a single at the end of the 19th over to retain strike. It was a 101 in the art of finishing, reminiscent of the MS Dhoni era of chasemanship.
"My game is always around the confidence which I carry, it has that fine line where I back myself and not become overconfident," Pandya said after the match. That he even turned down a single with Shreyas Iyer at the other end was a representation of this confidence.
He also revealed that his work on Sunday was, at least partly, down to extensive planning he made. "My entire focus during lockdown was wanting to finish games when it mattered most," he said. "The talk between Krunal (Pandya) and me was always, focussing on finishing games. I am not somebody who is too bothered if I don't score runs. If it's my time to do and the team wins... I'm the happiest..."
Yet, the 27-year-old is now India's leading run-scorer after five innings in two formats (his 268 is miles ahead of Kohli's 222). So, it was tempting to ask if he could potentially stay back for the Test series and play as a specialist batsman. "It's a different ball game," he said. "I don't mind, the call is with the management... I don't think I can say much."
He also had praise for Natarajan's character. The southpaw initially came in as a net-bowler but has now picked more wickets than any other Indian. "I am impressed with him because he keeps it simple. He doesn't complicate, when you ask him to bowl a yorker, he bowls a yorker. When you ask him to bowl a wide slower ball, he does that, that shows character. There's a lesson that if you keep things simple in life, it benefits you."
Pandya should know, when he was up against Daniel Sams in the final over, he repeatedly told himself 'matter of two big hits'.
After two losses to begin the tour, India, and Pandya, have delivered several hits to win the T20I leg of the series. Even if there is one more remaining (Sydney on Tuesday), the focus will slowly shift to Adelaide for the opening Test on December 17.