CHENNAI: Never before in their history have India lost four matches or more in a bilateral T20I series. Never before have India finished a bilateral series (3 or more games) without winning a game. Not since 2016 have the Men in Blue lost four or more matches in any white-ball series across formats (1-4 ODI series loss in Australia, 2016).
All of this will be in threat as skipper Shreyas Iyer and head coach Gautam Gambhir put their heads together to pick the playing XI for the fifth and final T20I against England in Southampton on Saturday.
Since the time they landed in Belfast in late June for the T20I series in Ireland, India have lost five games, apart from one washed out, and now, the last match provides a chance to get back to winning ways before the old guard — Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli — join them for the ODIs.
It seems so simple, but doing so might not be as easy. Through the course of six matches, Indian batters have struggled to adapt to conditions that assist pacers and provide extra bounce. They have also not adjusted their shot selection to the hard lengths from English pacers and it has cost them dearly. Then there is also the issue of chopping and changing by the team management along with the fitness concerns. Put it all together, Iyer and Gambhir are yet to put a foot in the right direction since coming together.
So much so that, as it often happens after every bad series (2024 New Zealand Tests, 2025 Border Gavaskar Trophy, South Africa Tests etc.) the BCCI is set to review the performance after the series. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia reportedly called it a "bad phase." Meanwhile, no kneejerk reaction is expected with regards to captain or coach, considering the secretary spoke on similar lines after the Test series loss in Guwahati last year.
That, however, does not take away any pressure Iyer and Gambhir might be feeling, especially the former who is yet to win a game as India captain. For someone who has established his authority as captain in the Indian Premier League and domestic cricket, the Mumbaikar is yet to make this team his own. And it shows in the decisions made. Whether it is stacking the line-up with all-rounders — Washington Sundar, Prince Yadav and Harshit Rana moving in and out of playing XI — or having three-left handers at the top, having seven southpaws and moving down Tilak Varma to No 6 from his usual top three has Gambhir's imprint all over it. That, meanwhile, does not take any accountability away from the captain, who too have not been spot on with his on-field tactics or inspiring batting performances (except for fourth T20I).
Which is why, assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate, who often fronts the media after a bad day, said he does not want to defend the players while not being overtly critical. "We haven't made an adjustment as much as we have spoken about the need to evolve and what works in India won't necessarily work here. It's something we're trying to address. At the same time, we own the performance. They have been really poor, but the majority of those guys won the World Cup four months ago. One of the guys who wasn't even there is the only guy really scoring heavy runs. So as disappointing as it's been, it's really important just to keep taking learnings from these games and keep trusting the players and giving them a bit of runway, given what they have done for the country in the past and make sure we keep getting better and learn to adapt to foreign conditions much better than we have done," he said after the loss. "Psychologically or mentally, I think the challenge to the group has been to accept the fact that we are underachieving in foreign conditions and to throw the gauntlet to the players and say, look, the big prize is two years down the line in Australia. Do we want to be a team that smashes 250 in India and looks great when you're hitting 80 metre six at Eden Gardens? Or do we want to come to places like this and places like Manchester and Southampton where things are slightly different and, again, thinking further down the line, the MCG and those sort of places. Do we want to be the team that actually excels in different conditions and do we have the mentality to make those adjustments? That's the mental challenge and that's where we need the players to be at, to take that on," Ten Doeschate added.
The first step towards all that would be avoiding a historic clean sweep in England. Can they? The next 24 hours will tell.
