“You could argue we don’t want Dhruv Jurel batting at No. 8,” ten Doeschate said. “I also think if you look at the blueprint of any of Gauti’s [head coach Gautam Gambhir] teams since he has been coaching T20 cricket, it is a big part of how he likes the set-up. The other night, with Dhruv coming in at No. 8, we obviously did not get to see the best of him. But we do believe that it’s a big part of strategy in these games.”
India are also aware of the perils of their high-intent approach, which has worked in their favour till now. That’s why they are not worried about their captain Suryakumar’s string of low scores. He was out for a two-ball duck in India’s easy chase in Kolkata but then got starts in the other two matches. He hit three fours in his seven-ball 12 in Chennai, and a four and a six in a seven-ball 14 in Rajkot. In his last six innings, he has scored just 52 runs. This is the first time that he has gone six innings without a fifty in T20Is.
“Someone like Surya has set such high standards [set] by himself, and I wouldn’t say consistency or predictability is a particularly high marker in T20 cricket,” ten Doeschate said. “The job we ask from these guys is to go out and score really quickly and the way the international T20 game has gone, we are allowed for a bit of consistency and a lean patch like he is going through at the moment.
“We always look at how guys are training, how guys are playing in the nets; he played two lovely shots the other night which made me think he’s back – one on the leg side and one on the off side. I don’t think it’s far away. I know he is captain of the team but just in general, Gauti is keen to back these guys and give them a long rope to prove themselves. He is one of the best batters in the world, let alone this Indian team. Certainly not concerned about him, he is a couple of shots away from being back on track and back in form.”
One of the challenges in front of Gambhir and his support staff was to oversee a team in transition. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja retired from T20Is after the T20 World Cup win last year while R Ashwin called it quits from international cricket during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. That was after India lost a home Test series for the first time in 12 years – to New Zealand – and then also conceded the Border-Gavaskar Trophy for the first time since 2014-15.
Ten Doeschate said that the results in T20Is – India have lost just three of their 18 matches since the World Cup – don’t necessarily mean that the transition has been smoother in this format as compared to Tests.
“It is easy to look at results and say it has been smoother,” he said. “The record of this team has been very good and the record of the other two teams [Test and ODI] has not been good. I haven’t noticed a big difference myself… I wish I could tell you this is vastly different, that is vastly different.
“Maybe a little more of a challenge [of formats] and maybe a bit more of a bigger profile to fill in in the guys who have been playing red-ball and 50-overs cricket in the last few years.”
