On the surface, India’s loss to Pakistan in the final of the ACC Men’s Emerging Cup in Colombo doesn’t merit excessive handwringing. India had thumped Pakistan earlier in the competition, but in the final, scoreboard pressure told after the Pakistan Shaheens piled up 352 on being sent in to bat. These things happen in sport. Luck plays a big part in one-off games, and the history of sport is littered with instances of unfancied sides winning finals.
And it’s not as though India lost to complete non-entities either. Tayyab Tahir, whose 66-ball century set up the huge total, is 29 and has already played both for the national side and in the Pakistan Super League (PSL). With the ball, much of the damage was done by Sufiyan Muqeem, a gifted left-arm spinner who was introduced by Peshawar Zalmi during the last PSL season. In fact, the Pakistani think-tank rate Muqeem so highly that he wasn’t played against India in the earlier game. In the final, his variations were simply too much to fathom.
Why, then, is there so much unease among Indian cricket followers? The Test side is poised to win another series in the Caribbean to start another World Test Championship (WTC) cycle on the perfect note. If Jasprit Bumrah is indeed racing back to full fitness, the ODI side will certainly be among the favourites for the World Cup on home soil in October-November. And the T20 team, which will contest a World Cup next summer, has been revitalised by the captaincy of Hardik Pandya and an infusion of young talent.
That’s far from a gloomy picture. But sport is about winning and, more importantly, staring down your opponents in the big moments. In the last decade, India haven’t done that. Across formats, they have been more consistent than any other side. There has been no need for drastic reboots like England after the 2015 World Cup debacle or Australia after Sandpapergate. But the big matches keep slipping away. What Sunday’s loss in Colombo – even if it wasn’t the senior side playing – did was reopen those wounds.
And there are many. India have been on the losing side in both WTC finals. They fell to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final in 2017, and to Sri Lanka in the World T20 summit clash three years earlier. World Cup semifinals have been lost in 2015 and 2019 – on each occasion, India were the form side in the group stages – to go with World T20 semi-final defeats in 2016 and 2022.
Let’s also state at the outset that India have no divine right to win tournaments. If the depth of the player pool and passion for the game among the population was the only criteria, Brazil would never lose a football match. Yet, they haven’t won the World Cup since 2002. Those within the Indian cricket ecosystem, like Rahul Dravid, the coach, swear by the process. They expect the team to be consistent and to be challenging for every honour. Getting to the knockout rounds – or finals, in the case of the WTC – consistently is evidence that the process works. Beyond that, luck plays a major part. But in India’s case, the setbacks since the 2013 Champions Trophy win have simply been too many to be attributed to Dame Fortune alone.
Recently, India fans celebrated the 21st anniversary of the NatWest Series triumph at Lord’s that saw an elated Sourav Ganguly waving his India shirt from the balcony. It has always been assumed that the provocative nature of the Indian captain’s celebration had much to do with Andrew Flintoff’s topless run across the Wankhede in Mumbai months earlier. And the two are certainly not unrelated.
But Ganguly’s reaction was also relief, as his team had finally thrown a 500-pound gorilla off their collective back. For nearly four years, they had been pilloried as losers and soft touches, the team that simply couldn’t get the job done in big matches and finals. Nine straight finals had been lost between April 1999 and October 2001, at venues as diverse as Bengaluru, Singapore, Nairobi and Durban. The teams that beat India in those games were also a motley crew, with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and West Indies on the list. Most notably, New Zealand, for whom Chris Cairns played a superb innings to seal victory in the ICC Knockout (the Champions Trophy’s predecessor) in 2000.
India’s ODI side then had Sachin Tendulkar and Ganguly at the top, the most prolific opening combination in history, and the advent of Virender Sehwag had given the side even more firepower. With Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble still around, the bowling had been given extra teeth with the emergence of Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Harbhajan Singh. But on the big days, India found increasingly bizarre ways to lose.
It was no real surprise that when the jinx was finally ended at Lord’s, with India overhauling an imposing total of 325, it was two relatively new faces that came to the fore. Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif had been promoted to the senior ranks after their heroics at the Under-19 World Cup in 2000, and were not scarred by the catalogue of old defeats. When the stalwarts failed at Lord’s, it was they that stepped up and saw India home.
After a full decade of near-misses, you sense that this is what India needs again. The squad chosen for the World Cup will be brimful of experience, with well over 1,500 caps between them. But if India are to go all the way and end this habit of buckling at key moments, the game-changers could well come from the uncapped or just-capped ranks. The likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Mukesh Kumar haven’t been scarred by those earlier defeats. And those fresh slates may just be what Indian cricket needs to write new chapters.
The catalogue of woe – key losses in the past decade
Two WTC finals – 2021 and 2023
CT final – 2017
World T20 final – 2014
Two World Cup semis – 2015 and 2019
Two World T20 semis – 2016 and 2022
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