T20 World Cup: India’s strategic shift ahead of Pakistan clash

To cope with the comparatively sluggish pitches in the tournament, especially in Colombo, India want bowlers to up their game & batters to adapt faster...

NEW DELHI: India’s pacers and spinners split into two separate nets on either of the centre square here at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Tuesday evening. For the next two hours, the bowlers bowled with full intensity, a rare scenario in the middle of a long and important tournament, in which players look to preserve energy for the big moments. The batters’ persistent assault has hogged headlines for over a month. Under the Kotla lights, the spotlight fell firmly on the bowlers going flat out two days out ahead of the game against Namibia here.

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Only Abhishek Sharma, still recovering from a stomach illness, didn’t turn up for the rigorous session.


The prep, expectedly, was for beyond just the match against Namibia. From the looks of it, the Indian team is carrying out a distinct change in their approach. With the match against Pakistan in Colombo on Feb 15 clearing all administrative and political hurdles late on Monday night, it’s time to put attention to detail. The scare against USA last Saturday notwithstanding, the tournament truly gets underway from Sunday for India. The conditions in Colombo, which have been distinctly different to what India have been playing in recently, are going to consume a lot of mind space.


“We understand the sentiments and the different politics between the two countries. But I think it’s really important for us just to focus on the cricket side of things. It’s going to be a challenge going to Colombo, where Pakistan have been (stationed) for the last two weeks. We are fully focused on bringing our best game to that fixture next week,” India’s straight-talking assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said on Tuesday.

The nature of pitches in the tournament in general has not encouraged big scores so far. The comparatively sluggish pitch at the Premadasa stadium in Colombo, in particular, definitely isn’t going to escape the attention of the Indian think-tank. Hence, there’s this urge to deviate from the all-out-aggressive brand of batting, with the pitches expected to get tired and slower as the tournament progresses.

“Judging how the pitches have played in the first five or six days of the tournament, there might be a slight revision in strategy and how we go about that,” Doeschate said.

“The pitches haven’t played quite the way we thought yet and again we want to be adaptive. We should have been a lot better than we were in Mumbai (against USA). We have been going all out but with the kind of pitches around, you want a bit of technique,” he added before shifting the focus on the bowling attack.

“I don’t think our bowlers have fired yet,” Doeschate said. “It’s maybe a little bit easy to look at the USA game and say that was a really good bowling performance, but you have to analyse it objectively in terms of where we put the ball and how we used the ball. We expect a lot more from the bowlers as well.

“Having the world-class bowlers that we have, it does give the batters that freedom to make mistakes in this format. If you’re shooting for 250 all the time, you’re going to make mistakes. But we need to react to situations as well,” Doeshcate said.

Washington provides options

With Washington Sundar going through his first practice session after recovering from a rib injury he sustained a month ago, the team has started reviewing combinations based on pitch conditions. “You know the luxury of having four allrounders is that you can change the combination. This is where Washington fits in,” Doeschate said.

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