Mumbai: Back-to-back series losses for the reigning T20 World Champions have prompted the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to set up a review meeting to take stock of the team’s drop in performance.
The meeting will take place after India’s tour of England concludes on July 19 with three crucial ODIs yet to be played following the 5-match T20I series. Chief selector Ajit Agarkar will be on tour during the ODI series. The Indian team led by new skipper Shreyas Iyer is trailing 0-3 with the final match to be played in Southampton on Saturday. Iyer is still searching for his first win as captain, having begun on the wrong foot with a 2-0 drubbing against Ireland, last month.
“The BCCI is currently observing the performance of the Indian T20 team, which has not been up to the mark. However, this is not something abnormal and can happen in international cricket. We consider it as a purely bad phase,” BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said. “Once the team comes back, we will have a review meeting with core members of the team to discuss what went wrong.”
Addressing rumours of head coach Gautam Gambhir’s neck being on the line, Saikia was quick to add the review would be “all about team performance and nothing else would be discussed.”
There is still pressure on Gambhir and Iyer to stage a turnaround. Even the dead-rubber on Saturday holds importance with England in with a chance to upstage India as the No.1 ranked T20 team with a 4-0 result.
The selection committee too finds itself facing the heat having made the bold move to phase out 2026 World Cup winning captain Suryakumar Yadav and hand Iyer a comeback to the fold after a two-and-half year gap, that too as captain. Newly appointed vice-captain Tilak Varma too hasn’t been able to hold his own in the middle order.
Iyer comes with strong leadership credentials established over the past three IPL seasons and despite the results, hasn’t done too many things wrong as captain or batter. He played a lone hand of 80 (49b) in the 4th T20I against England where India were bundled out for 159 and outclassed. But the capitulation of India’s powerhouse batters in foreign conditions – both in Ireland and England – has left a lot to be desired. Repeated ungainly dismissals facing the short ball against England and being ill-at-ease countering testing pitches in Ireland have raised doubts over the future of India’s aggressive batting template and squad selection which worked well in the last T20 cycle at home.
There is also scrutiny over the team management’s decision to drop the Player of the tournament from the World Cup Sanju Samson after three failures during the England series. Why the selection committee chose only Samson among the entire batting group to be rested in the upcoming tour of Zimbabwe has also been left unexplained. These matters could be raised in the stock-taking exercise.
Whether anything substantive comes out of the BCCI review though remains to be seen. The last review was conducted after India’s shock Test defeat at home to New Zealand. Since then, the Indian Test team slumped further with another home defeat to South Africa. Failure to get desired results in the away tours of Sri Lanka and New Zealand, slated for August and November, could further dim India’s chances to make next year’s World Test Championship final. That would mar Gambhir’s coaching portfolio further, although BCCI’s hands are tied with lack of credible alternatives.