Indian cricket team is putting on a spectacular show of skills this World Cup, and you’d easily pay to watch it | Cricket-world-cup News

It was just after the ninth over, shortly after Rohit Sharma had smeared Haris Rauf for a pair of sixes, that the edges of a wondrous night in Ahmedabad began to sharpen a little and the destiny of the game assumed crystal clarity. The fate of a crushing India win seemed unchangeable—no tweak or tactic could alter it—for such was the domination India wielded. So much so that not a nerve of anxiety was shed in the ocean of blue the stands was. Pakan looked shattered, tired of running into dead ends filled with blue shirts.In three matches of this World Cup, India have blown their opponents away with a streak of ruthlessness reminiscent of Ricky Ponting’s Australia that claimed back-to-back titles. But the most fascinating aspect of their game is not merely winning or dominating, but the assimilations of skills and styles that have punctuated their victories.
Watching India, thus, is a vivid and fulfilling experience, a slice of the country’s own twinkling diversity. A confluence of varied and dinct cultures tessellating to construct something magnificent and immortal. To get a g of the variety that makes India, you need not hop into a train that connects Kashmir to Kanyakumari, or taste the wondrous cuisines en route. But just tune into a cricket game of theirs. The experience is both enlightening and educational, in a cricketing sense.
Shubman Gill on the left and Kuldeep Yadav on the right. (PTI)
It’s a team that you would pay to watch, you would bunk office hours, you would lie to your boss or spouse or parent for, you would ensure that you would not miss a ball. The team could convert the cynics into supporters, the doubters to faithful. It could make you fall in love with the game; make you a cricket-addict even. To watch them is to be lost in a beautiful world.
Like a great piece of literature or music, you could pick from anywhere and be marveled. Like the cover drives Shubman Gill authored. In his brief stay, he stroked three. The third was perhaps the most gorgeous. Hasan Ali had found a modicum of out-swing, but Gill just waits for it, gauges and accounts for the movement and merely coaxes the ball through covers. Still eyes, stiller head and body, he seemed like batting perfection chiseled into human flesh.
Has there been a more aesthetically pleasing opening pair than Gill and Rohit Sharma ever in this format? It’s doubtful. Sharma has batted as though fueled a supersonic engine, batting at a strike rate of 141. Here, he has transformed his batting into an expression of joy and freedom, his child-like passion for the game. He has not let the burden of captaining the country on home soil spoil the joy he gets from batting.
He thrilled the audience with an array of strokes, of which each one deserve a space of its own. The cut, the drives, the glides, the bat twirling in his hands like a magician’s wand in soft, rhythmic movements. But the pull still is his most charming, because pull is designed not to charm but to terrorize bowlers. It’s the slap on your face that’s more insulting than the more painful punch on your nose. Afridi copped the insult when Sharma pulled Pakan’s most fearsome over fine leg. Such strokes instill a sense of despair among the opponents. You could see the last fume of hope disappearing from Afridi’s face.
Sharma took a single and made way for the man the crowd had come to watch the most. There could be a stellar star-cast in this team, but one star is more glittering than the others. That is Virat Kohli. He, like Gill, did not last too long, but in his time in the middle, he thrilled the crowd with his cover-driving. After he was pulled for a four, Afridi responded with a full ball, angling in from around the stumps. Kohli just strode forward, majestically and emphatically and drove him through the covers. He struck the pose in his follow-through that ten thousand cameras would have absorbed to treasure forever. A slice of batting divinity.
Chennai: Indian batter KL Rahul plays a shot during the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup match between India and Australia, at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, in Chennai, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023. (PTI Photo/R Senthil Kumar)
Such a top-heavy line-up could obscure the batsman-ship of Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul. But they are unique in their own ways; they have their own specialities. Few batsmen step out to spinners in the old-fashioned way of Shreyas Iyer. Who cuts a spinning ball as delicately or clinically as KL Rahul? And for sheer power and bluster, when the need arrives, you have Hardik Pandya.
Then in case if you had missed India’s chases, the setting up for targets the bowlers would be fulfilling enough. The depth of their skills seems bottomless. The Ahmedabad surface did not offer much movement for seamers; there was not much turn for the spinners either. But they somehow coerced the surface into friendship.
Mohammed Siraj produced two cross-seam beauties—one that landed on the leather part that skidded on and one that landed on the seam that stopped and held the line—to define the match. Jasprit Bumrah, the ustaad of Indian bowlers’ deathly qawwali, has been hitting notes that only he could hit. His ways to wicket are several—he bowled Mohammed Rizwan with a dreamy off-cutter, he castled Shadab Khan with a standard ball that straightened off the seam. The ball before had landed at the exact spot and ducked into Shadab. Bumrah’s deception has many layers and faces.

As does those of Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav. Jadeja reaped doubts in batters’ minds with the first ball he bowled. It pitched on off-stump and kicked away past Rizwan’s blade. The surface offered no substantial turn, but in the batsmen’s mind the ball was ripping and turning. Kuldeep is half a decade into the game, his mystery has worn off, but still he confounds and confuses batsmen. He did not produce outrageous turn on Saturday, but just enough, allied with impeccable control, to bargain wickets. The collective chaos they could wreak was demonstrated in Chennai on a semi-turner.
What of the bench-cast—Mohammed Shami, Ravi Ashwin, Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan. All could run a show of their own. That then is the incredible wealth of this team, one that makes them the outright favourites to kiss the trophy. Whether they are crowned winners or not in the end, whether their domination withers or not, they are an unputdownable proposition, the assimilation of skills is as diverse as the game has ever seen. Just pick a random page from any of the three games, and be fulfilled. India’s performance has been a sort of cricketing perfection. One you would readily pay to watch.

Medley of magic moments:
Jasprit Bumrah: The Mohammed Rizwan off-cutter
Mohamed Siraj: The Babar Azam cross-seamerMost Read
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Ravi Ashwin: The carrom ball that beat Steve Smith in Chennai
Ravi Jadeja: Steve Smith bowled in Chennai
Kuldeep Yadav: The Saud Shakeel lbw
Shubman Gill: Any of the three cover drives he essayed in Ahmedabad.
Virat Kohli: The second cover drive he hit off Shaheen Afridi
Rohit Sharma: The pulled six of Afridi
KL Rahul: The cut off Zampa from the stumps