Former India captain and coach Anil Kumble has offered a practical suggestion for the Men in Blue side to improve in modern-era T20I cricket after their embarrassing exit from the T20 World Cup 2022 tournament.
India, who were considered one of the favorites to lift the trophy, was knocked out of the competition by England as they won the second semi-final at Adelaide by 10 wickets and booked tickets to Melbourne for a final face-off against Pakistan on Sunday.
In the aftermath of India’s exit from the T20 World Cup, Anil Kumble said that power-hitting will rule T20 cricket going forward and has suggested the Indian team needs to play a brand of cricket where big-hitting batters contribute with the ball as well.
India’s timid batting approach invited criticism from all quarters as it led to a heavy defeat that spelled the ouster of the side from the premier ICC event.
“…what I see as something that certainly needs to be done is, how we keep talking about bowlers need to bat. But I think in Indian cricket, you need batters to bowl too for the balance of the team. That’s exactly what England have. They had too many choices. They used Liam Livingstone. Moeen Ali has hardly bowled in this tournament. So those are the choices that you need,” Anil Kumble told ESPNCricinfo.
Kumble found fault with the selection of Indian teams, saying the current trend needs to change.
“Unfortunately, even in the India A team that gets picked, it’s mostly batters who don’t bowl. It’s important to create that brand of cricket and say that this is how the Indian team is going to do it and it should follow right through the system. I think the more and more you play T20s, it’s going to be like this, where you just come and show your power. So that’s exactly how I think T20 is going to go forward,” he said.
He further said that every player should understand the specific role assigned to him and once that’s finalized the team should stick to that. And this should not be restricted to the Indian team, but this mindset needs to be ingrained in players in domestic cricket itself.
“One is of course having that brand of cricket and then choosing the players to do that but I think it’s also important that these players play their specific roles wherever they play. Because it’s not about just playing that role for India and then going back to your domestic cricket and franchise cricket and then changing the way you’re going to go about it. For example, Pant today (Thursday) batted for India at No 6, he walked in in the 19th over. He never does that in domestic cricket,” he said.
He signed off by saying: “So you need some kind of role definition as well there and that’s something I think is very critical if you’re going to build a potent team where you need a back-up for those roles and not necessarily your six best players whatever role they can. It’s very difficult to do that in a World Cup.”
(PTI inputs)
