There were no high-fives; no fist-bumps or excessive celebrations. Suryakumar Yadav and Shivam Dube walked back to the pavilion with cussed faces, greeted with similarly measured demeanour by the players and support staff in the dressing room. They walked with the emotional bearing of a team that has made crushing adversaries routine. The seven-wicket victory over Pakistan was not so much a stroll as it was a brutal exposing of the gulf of talent between the two sides; once equals, now no longer so.
The Indian chase was symbolically settled in two balls. The first two balls of the innings. Shaheen Shah Afridi steamed in, chugging in his long limbs like a heavy locomotive. He was searching for that dramatic yorker, curling, swinging, bending in. Hitting the pads or blasting the stumps. The design fell flat.
Abhishek Sharma, embodying all the fearlessness of India’s new-age batting glitterati, merely sashayed down the ground, met the ball on the full and smashed it down the ground. Afridi, puffing air, looked destroyed, already bereft of energy and will.
CAKEWALK 👏#TeamIndia cruise past Pakistan, chasing 127 inside 16 overs 🤩
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He re-measured his run-up, gave himself a motivational talk, and sprinted in again. He summoned all the energy he possibly could. He would have probably repented that. Abhishek, in a rampant mood, just stretched his front foot, a long definite stride, and creamed him over extra cover for a flat and fierce six.
It was not the 10 runs, but the strokes that brought those, the consummate ease, the shuddering brilliance. Every stroke was akin to a slap on the bowler’s face. Afridi walked back stroking his chin, plotting an atonement. It was not to come.
Even though Shubman Gill floundered, stumped after a pair of fours in off-spinner Saim Ayub’s over, Abhishek was in a punishing mood. Afridi was again the hapless victim.
The first ball of the next over, overwhelmed by emotions and not the game situation, he bowled short and wide. Abhishek gleefully accepted, his lightning fast hands lancing it to the point fence. Afridi’s riposte was a hard length ball on the middle stump, which he defended. The next ball was similar, only that Abhishek pasted it over midwicket, with a wristy flourish, reminiscent of his mentor Yuvraj Singh. He then lashed a couple of fours off Ayub, before mis-timing one to long off.
He shrugged his head. He could visualise the ball soaring over the roof. Just that he could not get under the ball as much as he would have liked.
But the mood changed when he reached the dressing room, where the television cameras caught him having a laugh with a support staff member. In 13 balls, he had wiped off half the target required. Just to contextualise his knock, Pakistan’s opener Sahibzada Farhan, even though he struck two gorgeous sixes off Jasprit Bumrah, crawled to a 44-ball 40, a rate of scoring that has become primitive even in the 50-over format. But when Abhishek departed, came Tilak Varma and sustained pace.
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Take-no-prisoners approach
It is India’s T20 doctrine. No decelerating for personal milestones. No lag in impetus. No shackling of impulses. It’s the template Pakistan had desperately tried to copy, but so far are unable to instil in their batsmen. Pakistan’s vision is grand. Like most modern batting firms, they want to raise the roof, rattle along their innings, score 10 runs an over. But they simply don’t possess the power-hitters to execute the concept.
What they have is a group trying as hard as possible to fulfill the lofty ideals, but unable to achieve the end, still trapped in an ancient cave. Their metamorphosis in the format has followed an inverse trajectory. When the format began, they possessed exemplary hitters. Those who relied on power, touch and timing, those who possessed sinuous wrists and quicker brains. The current crop are neither touch artistes nor power-hitters, they are something in between, lost in an identity crisis.
This Sharmaji ka ladka is a little too tough to contain 😮💨
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They would covet the superfluous riches of India, like how India did in the Sharjah years. Pakistan bossed the ODI years with their splendidly virtuosic seam merchants, spin wizards and batting maestros. India were eons inferior to them, in both quality and quantity of talent, relying too much on individual flourishes. It’s India’s turn to make Pakistan jealous.
Almost frighteningly, India brandished their supremacy. It was not a victory that rode on raw emotional energy that buzzes when the teams meet, but cold-eyed ruthlessness, leaving nothing to fate, but seizing the reins from the first ball.
What would hurt Pakistan the deepest, almost tattering their soul, is India’s superior fast bowling stock. Jasprit Bumrah was the most nagging pacer, bending his back, snapping his wrists, the ball exploding like a shrapnel off the surface, hitting the higher part of the blade, hastening batsmen and spreading fear in their minds.
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Hardik Pandya, the new-ball accomplice, seamed the ball deviously to eject Ayub. He skids the new ball off a hard length, seams it both ways from a fuller length and bowls the short ball to good effect.
Or the spinners. Pakistan could be a diversely skilled firm, could skittle out batsmen of lesser gifts. But they were far inferior to India’s well-worn trio. They staggered off the ground after restricting Pakistan to 127, soaked in sweat and rinsing their face with water, reflecting their mood.
Together, their figures read: 12-0-60-6; an astronomical 40 dot balls, leaking only three sixes and as many fours. Like in an ensemble cast movie, each gave a thrilling account of their oeuvre, each distinctly marvellous. It applies at large for the entire team. Man for man, the disparity in quality between the personnel of both sides is enormous. Like the brick phone and the modern smartphone.
Pakistan did not have the collective will to stop India, a luminous blend of superior talents blazing to make the collective click, steamrollering to another routine victory.
