Time to sing the Redemption Song

Give the huge talent pool, India needs to invest in T20 specialists

Until the Athens Games in 2004, the US men’s basketball team had suffered just two defeats in Olympic history. In the Greek capital alone, they were beaten three times, including in the semifinals by eventual champions Argentina.

That performance led to massive soul-searching and the sneaky suspicion that the high-profile NBA was doing more harm than good to US basketball. It needed the introduction into the team in 2007 of Kobe Bryant to bring about a seminal change in attitude. The LA Lakers superstar is said to have told his new national team-mates, “I’m tired of watching y’all lose.”

The US team’s journey from also-rans in Greece to champions again in Beijing in 2008 is captured beautifully in The Redeem Team. It’s a film the Indian cricket team would do well to watch, if necessary, repeatedly, until it starts singing the redemption song.

Also read | Trouble at the top ends India's World Cup hopes

The IPL is India’s cricketing equivalent of the NBA. It throws up superstars at the drop of a hat, it makes heroes out of mere mortals; it also provides a platform to showcase one’s skills and ability to perform under pressure. It’s the means to an end – national representation – but if it starts to become an end in itself, that’s when the problem starts.

In the aftermath of a fourth successive defeat at the semifinal stage of a World Cup, a sequence dating back to the 50-over tournament in Australia in 2015, it might be tempting to lay all the blame for India’s troubles on the IPL. It’s worth remembering, though, that this is the same tournament that has given international cricket numerous virtuoso performers, and not all of them Indian.

The IPL is easily the strongest, most competitive franchise-based T20 league in the world and, by definition, it is India-centric, so it stands to reason that it will produce a bushel of cricketers aspiring to don the India blues. Over the last few years, much has been made of the immense strength in depth of the Indian cricket team, and not without justification. But when with all the resources at their disposal they are still unable to crack the World Cup conundrum, clearly, something must give.

The dichotomy between the depth argument and the workload management concept throws up several questions, the most pertinent being whether it is time to invest entirely in T20 specialists. There might be the odd overlap, of course, but when there are so many to choose from based on their IPL exploits alone, why not handpick, nurture and groom them so that even if they eventually become one-trick ponies, they will have mastered that one trick, be better at it than anyone else?

Take the Indian XI that played in Thursday’s doomed T20 World Cup semifinal against England, for instance. Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, R Ashwin and Mohammed Shami are all-format internationals, as are Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja, who would both have been a shoo-in had they been available for selection.

Not even taking into account the immense versatility and adaptability required to switch from one format to another totally diverse version, how can these players be expected to be fresh, driven and intense all the time? Why not switch things around, plump for acknowledged T20 experts and sprinkle the odd multi-format player into the mix so that India can take advantage of the rich talent pool that the IPL throws up?

For now, much of the talk is about how India didn’t commit whole-heartedly during the World Cup to their aggressive batting designs, how toothless the bowling is in the absence of any assistance, and how an ageing side needs to be shaken up. All of these points aren’t without merit, but maybe it isn’t the worst idea to think out of the box and go on the road less travelled in the quest for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when the beaten path has provided no joy for so long.

Rahul Dravid has shown himself to be a revolutionary with a cause and purpose; perhaps he will embark on this route because he knows as well as anyone else that you can’t keep making the same mistakes each time and expect different results.