World T20: Despite win, India grappling with serious issues

Emotions ran high on Wednesday night after India skipped a beat in Bangalore with a one-run win over Bangladesh to keep their hopes alive at the World Twenty20.

There was chatter suggesting how the shocking defeat at the hands of the neighbours in the 2007 World Cup had finally been avenged.

The world took note of MS Dhoni’s midas touch for the umpteenth time.

Frenzy took over the 140-character space in social media, as overjoyed fans dissected the match and the eventual victory in every possible detail. Team India celebrated Holi. Bangladesh worked on removing the tiger paint.

India face Australia next. Even if the odds were to favour the millions who dote on MS Dhoni’s boys, chances are you probably won’t find the Aussies gifting three wickets in three deliveries to lose a game from a position of relative strength, the way Bangladesh did. That, for all practical purposes, will remain the truth behind what Team India accomplished in Bangalore on Wednesday and what they set out to do in Mohali this Sunday. Desperate Aussies won’t really offer India what suicidal Bangladesh did.

Attempted yorkers ending as full-tosses, wide back-of-the-length deliveries waiting to be slashed and cut, catches that should’ve been taken, boundaries that weren’t supposed to be, two opening batsmen who’ve failed to get going, a middle-order figuring out its shot-selection -they’ll all be accounted for against an opponent that don’t often fail to make use of opportunities.

It is clear already -not that it was going to be a surprise coming into this tournament -how India have been playing on tracks starkly dissimilar to the ones that have been on offer at non-India venues. Mumbai, for instance, has been a belter and so has been Mohali, from what we saw in the only match played there between New Zealand and Pakistan.

If India have come to believe that obnoxiously turning wickets alone have to be their saviour in a Twenty20 format, it’s about time they get a hang of how to lift their own batting standards on such surfaces. Barring Virat Kohli, who’s been batting extraordinarily well, none of the other Indian batsmen have shown the right instincts so far.

If not for his own presence of mind to do what was needed in moments that ultimately mattered, Dhoni wouldn’t have been so overjoyed with the display that India put up on a ‘very lucky’ Wednesday. Constant change in field-settings, for instance, has been a propelling factor for Dhoni, who seems to depend a lot more on certain individuals, vis-a-vis the rest of his teammates.

It is perhaps in this knowledge that Dhoni, ever the ‘captain cool’, lost his temper when answering a reporter’s question on what he thought about the run-rate quotient that could return to bite India.

“Your tone doesn’t suggest you like the fact that India won,” Dhoni said. Apropos of nothing, it was a valid question.

While the hosts are placed second on the points table in ‘Group 2’, their run-rate is below New Zealand, Australia and Pakistan. Now, what if Pakistan beat Australia and Australia beat India? It’s the runrate alone that will begin to matter.