Underdogs to top dogs

In the 2011 edition, his first World Cup, Virat Kohli, 22, was the apprentice. India won, becoming the first host nation to do so, and Kohli, an year into his international career, was part of a champion side. Four years later, in the 2015 edition, he was the star batsman, but M.S. Dhoni was still the boss. Now, four more years later, Kohli goes into his third World Cup as the captain of the world’s best Test team, and as the best batsman in Test and ODI cricket.

The intense Kohli leads a team that has a mix of youthful rookies and battle-hardened veterans. The team has been called the favourites, alongside hosts England and Australia, and rightly so. Since May 2017, India have won 41 of 59 ODIs, or 69.49 per cent of their matches. In the same period, England, the world’s best ODI team, have won 32 of 46 ODIs with a win percentage of 69.56! Australia, the five-time champions, had had a horrific run coming into 2019, but recouped just in time. They beat India at home, coming from behind to win the series 3-2. Clearly, there is a reason experts do not discount Australia when it comes to the World Cup.

For India, Kohli will be the main man, steering his team’s hopes with his near-perfect batting. The two men preceding him, openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan, are also heavyweights in white-ball cricket. They are chalk and cheese, yet kindred spirits. Their batting mantra is the same: “freedom of expression”. While Sharma is the only batsman with three double hundreds in ODIs, Dhawan has been India’s go-to man in recent ICC tournaments. The southpaw was India’s top scorer in the 2017 Champions Trophy and in the 2015 World Cup. Together, Sharma, Dhawan and Kohli have scored the bulk of India’s runs in the past few years, and will draw on the World Cup experiences to take India into the knockout stage.

Then there is the senior statesman in the side—Mahendra Singh Dhoni—who knows all about winning World Cups. While he might not be at the peak of his batting powers, his value to the team far surpasses that aspect of his game. His quiet, calm presence is the perfect foil to the intense Kohli.

Before leaving for England, the captain had called his team “very strong” and “balanced”. More than the conditions in England, he said, the bigger challenge for his team was pressure. “Playing white-ball cricket in England, playing an ICC tournament, the conditions are not that different or that difficult, compared with Test cricket,” he said in Mumbai. “Pressure is the most important thing in the World Cup.”

He added that the round-robin format, last used in the 1992 World Cup, could take its toll on the players. Though there are more chances to recoup, it would be hard to sustain form for close to two months. “It is probably the most challenging World Cup I have been part of because of the format, and [given] the strength of all the sides as well,” said Kohli. “If we live up to the standards we set for ourselves, we will be on the right side of the result more often. That is going to be key. You have to play every game to the best of your potential, because it is not a group stage any more.”

And India do not have any easy matches to get into the groove. Their first four matches are against South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan.

Regardless, M.S.K. Prasad, the chairman of selectors, said he was happy with the 15 players picked. Barring a few players tried out for the number four position, the selectors were spot on with the blooding of youngsters in the past three years. Be it all-rounder Hardik Pandya, pacer Jasprit Bumrah or wrist spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, each one of them had passed with flying colours. “We did not really go through any anxious moments when it came to picking new players,” he told THE WEEK. “[The players we picked] succeeded straightaway.”

Regarding the conditions in England, the teams would expect slow, dry, batsmen-friendly wickets in peak summer. In other words, hell for bowlers. But the teams have prepared for that. Prasad even said that India’s bowling was the “most potent and one that covers all bases”.

Indeed, bowling has been crucial to India’s recent success. Apart from a reinvigorated Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, India also has the best ODI bowler in the world—Jasprit Bumrah. The youngster does the job for Kohli with the new ball, breaks partnerships in the middle overs and bowls perfectly at the death. He has shown that he can defend even a handful of runs in the last over. In the past two years, in fact, he has taken 37 wickets at the death, at an average of 14.48, the best among his contemporaries.

The presence of all-rounders Pandya and Vijay Shankar add strength to the pace attack, while Yadav and Chahal can tie batsmen up in knots with their spin.

“All the bowlers in the squad, even during the IPL, were preparing themselves for 50-over cricket,” said Kohli. “And if you saw the guys, no one looked tired after bowling four overs. They were fresh. The ultimate goal is to be fit for the 50-over format and not let their fitness come down. This was communicated to them before the IPL started.”

Chahal echoed his captain’s views. “Especially last time, when we played there (in England), the wickets were a bit slow and there was some help for spinners,” he told THE WEEK. “That was in my mind and I prepared here, during the IPL, keeping that in mind. It could be that the conditions are totally different from what we got a year ago, but you have to back yourself and your skills.”

Harbhajan Singh, who was part of the 2011 World Cup-winning team, said the current ODI rules, which allow only four fielders outside the 30-yard circle in overs 11 to 40, has made scoring easier for batsmen. “[Especially] if the pitches during the World Cup are what they were like during the [recent] England-Pakistan series,” he told THE WEEK. However, he added that India had the edge with the spin duo. “People have not been able to read them well or attack them,” he said. “If they play together, I think they will make a serious impact. They block runs at both ends, resulting in wickets for either of them. People may say the pace bowling is stronger, but India’s strength is actually spin.” Yadav and Chahal have played 28 ODIs together, taking 103 wickets at an average of 23.5.

Moreover, with set batsmen attacking in middle overs, said Harbhajan, the only option for the leg spinners was to counter attack. “Containment will not do the job in the middle overs,” he said.

Unfortunately for India, though, Yadav recently had a torrid time in the IPL; the Kolkata Knight Riders did not play him in five of their 14 matches, and in the 33 overs he did bowl, he got only four wickets. After the IPL, Yadav took a break to refocus.

Harbhajan, however, was not too worried, and neither was Kohli. “For someone like Kuldeep, who has had so much success, it is important to see a period where things do not go your way,” said Kohli. “We are glad that it happened during the IPL, rather than during the World Cup. He has time to reflect, time to correct things and come into the World Cup even stronger. [He], along with Chahal, are the two pillars of our bowling line-up.”

On June 5, as India take on South Africa, history will beckon them. It was 36 years ago that Kapil’s Devils, the underdogs, upset the mighty West Indies to change Indian cricket forever. Eight editions and four generations later, Kohli’s team, one of the favourites, will look to conquer the world yet again. The common link, Ravi Shastri—a member of the 1983 team and now the coach—would want nothing more than for history to repeat itself.