The fifth T20I later today against England at The Ageas Bowl will bring an end to India’s miserable tour of the United Kingdom. Their tour started on June 26 with the first T20I against Ireland, and ever since, it has been nothing but chaos for them.
While players are the easiest targets after such a debacle, the truth of the matter is that the BCCI is also to blame. The Indian players had no time to prepare for the ongoing tour. If these series were held somewhere in the sub-continent, it would have been okay, but the UK has totally different conditions. The pitches, the weather, the size of the boundaries, everything requires a different focus. India have historically struggled in England and needed to prepare well in advance before embarking on such a challenging tour.
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If truth be told, the series against Afghanistan wasn’t timely planned. Ideally, after the Indian Premier League ended on May 31, they should have started preparations for the UK tour; instead, Afghanistan came to India for one Test and three ODIs. Not just that, there was a 50-overs tri-series in Sri Lanka as well for India A. Two players from the current T20I Indian squad — Tilak Varma and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi — were there playing a totally different format in totally different conditions.
Why would you play a Test match and 50-overs cricket ahead of an important T20I tour? Plus, there was no time for bonding with the new captain, Shreyas Iyer. The Indian selectors shocked many when they dropped Suryakumar Yadav totally from their plans early last month in favour of Iyer.
Every captain is different. They have different plans and vision. Iyer never got any time to gel with the team. The fact that he had not played any T20Is for India since December 2023 made it all the more important that he spent some time with his team. Instead, the team landed a couple of days before the first game. Yes, they should not have lost to Ireland — definitely not in back-to-back games — but it can’t be denied that they came into these games under-prepared, and T20 is one format where even lesser teams can upstage the giants of the game on their day. Ireland did exactly that.
India missed Bumrah and Pandya
India also missed Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya, two of the most valuable players in T20Is in the last few years. If they had been in the team, India would have done a lot better. If the world’s number one team plays without two of its best players, it is not exactly India’s best outfit. Prasidh Krishna, Prince Yadav and Harshit Rana, with so little experience in these conditions, didn’t have a chance.
One good thing that has happened on this tour is that now we all know for sure that Sooryavanshi has a long way to go before he becomes the finished article. In the last few months, the spotlight hasn’t moved an inch away from him. Now we know he has lots of areas to work on. After this and the upcoming Zimbabwe tour, he can get back to domestic cricket and hone his skills across formats, not just in T20s.
From whatever we have seen so far, it will take an extremely brave man to back India for tonight’s game, but it will be good if they can finish the tour with a win. Six defeats in seven games — one being a washout — will be a horrible result, but then the BCCI will have no one but themselves to blame for not thinking the tour through.