MUMBAI: Surely it wasn't supposed to be like this, no? This was going to be their big moment, 'repeat history, defeat history', like Rohit Sharma had said in an ad for the host broadcaster before the tournament.
Three days into the Super Eights stages of the World Cup, the Indian team are like outsiders, looking past the drawn curtains, hoping to catch a glimpse of the party they are co-hosting. How did it come down to this?
Last Sunday against Pakistan at the R Premadasa, they were grand. What a difference a week makes, eh? Against South Africa at the new Motera, whatever they touched turned into fool's gold. That they partly contributed to it only added insult to injury as Washington Sundar's inclusion at the expense of Axar Patel didn't have the necessary impact.
While India's bowling unit remains sturdy, it's the batting department that has seemingly gone kaput, an irony because the latter was the one doing all the running coming into the tournament. But the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) completely seems to have missed the point about pitches in ICC events. This was the exact scenario in 2019 as well. In the four years to the run-up to the 50-over World Cup in the United Kingdom, teams were routinely posting in excess of 300. A fair few matches saw teams breaching 400 in domestic cricket. Teams between Full Members were seeing 330 vs. 310. All of this prompted suggestions that the 2019 World Cup would see a score of 500.
Those predictions didn't come to pass.
This edition of the World Cup, then, is basically a similar iteration as strips have had something in it for the pacers. Spinners have been able to get some grip. And with the competition heading into the business stages of the tournament, tracks are bound to become slower as they tire.
It's here that the Indian batting unit seems to have missed a trick or two. It increasingly looks like they have turned up to the World Cup assuming pitches would be the same irrespective of the nature of the event. There's enough experience in that dressing room to know that's not the case. That's even before you take into consideration that teams generally score at a slower rate at ICC events because of the stakes involved.
Some of the Indian batters have tried to be proactive to move the game forward but the necessary application has deserted them. Here's a number. In the 17 games they have played in the country since June 30, 2024 till the beginning of this World Cup, they scored 169 runs every 100 balls.
That's down to 136 in India's four matches at home as they have struggled to adapt to used surfaces, opposition who are better prepared given the stage and a serious crisis of confidence that's gripped India's top order. Both Hardik Pandya and Ishan Kishan, following the Namibia game when their spinners tied the Indian batters down with some accurate bowling on a tacky strip, voiced their opinions. Kishan said after the game: "In both the wickets, I feel it was a bit different from what we expected to happen and today, looking at the death overs, when we were not able to regularly hit big sixes." That '... bit different from what we expected,' is an indication that the team management didn't budget for tricky, typical pitches hosting countries would get for a World Cup.
Because the Indian team hasn't matched up expectations with a new reality, their batters are continuing to live in a world of bilateral cricket and flat decks where 200 is the bare minimum. It's kind of why Ryan ten Doeschate said the time may be right for an intervention with the batting group.
"I think, again, it needs a little bit of assessment and application and it's a fine line between putting the reins and stopping guys from playing the way they play but I think it's come to the point now where the intervention of saying 'guys, there's different ways to go about a chase, even setting a score," the assistant coach had said after the loss against South Africa on Sunday. "And like I say, we've spoken about it a lot, but we haven't implemented it across the board and I think that's cost us in some of the performances with the bat so far.
"Look, I've sort of banged the drum about it, but I think the biggest challenge to us is finding a way to play on wickets that are not typical to what we're playing on," he said when asked about three of the problem areas the team would be focussing on between Monday and the game against Zimbabwe on Thursday. It's going to be all hands on deck between now and 7.00 PM on Thursday for the co-hosts to come up with a suitable response.
For they are just 40 overs from exiting the World Cup they began as favourites.