Is This India's Best Ever ODI Team?

As Ravindra Jadeja pulled Will O'Rourke to the deep square leg boundary to seal India's felicitous triumph of the Champions Trophy — its third overall following the shared win in Colombo 2002 with the hosts and in 2013 at England — the reaction among the players, to be sure, was one of joy. 

But the emotional excitement that one got to see on the memorable night of 28 June 2024 when Rohit Sharma and his team pulled off a heist against South Africa in the final of the T20 World Cup was little less. That was pure theatre of unbridled delight.

But make no mistake, the comprehensive win in the Champions Trophy was no less in stature, as some of the carping critics are trying to project. The fact that India was stationed at a single venue in Dubai while others had to travel a bit was not India's fault.

The BCCI had made it clear that it could not travel to Pakistan, a country that had consistently exported terror to India's territory for years. That India agreed to play Pakistan in the neutral ground of Dubai was in itself a gracious effort to salvage the tournament hosted by PCB. In the mindless polemics, the BCCI's flexibility to save the PCB is lost sight of. Without putting too fine a point on it, the Champions Trophy would have folded like an untethered tent if India had pulled out.

Also, the perceived advantages of India enjoying the benefits of being confined to a single venue seem overstated and theoretical, especially as India lost all the tosses and in no match had the better of the conditions.

Anyway, on the basis of the current form and approach, it can be forcefully argued that even in the hypothetical situation of the whole tournament being confined just to Pakistan, Rohit's team would have aced the deal. The flawless five wins in the tournament and the reality that no team really pushed India to any major discomfort was perhaps at the centre of Indian players' relatively subdued celebrations.

India, a decidedly dominant force

Take the finals itself, save for the brief stutter when three quick wickets in India's pursuit of the Kiwi's middling 251, India was in firm control in a way that champion teams are wont to.

Just consider the way how India wrested back the initiative after the New Zealanders got off to an impressive start of 69 for 1 in the powerplay. The unlikely spin quartet of Axar Patel, Kuldip Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, and Varun Chakravarthy, who bowled 30 overs between them on the trot between 11 and 40 overs in the finals was a clinical show of how to apply brakes on a team that was threatening to go on the rampage after that opening batting burst.

The figure of the Indian tweakers in that crucial phase was: 103 for 4. And this on a pitch that was decidedly less friendly among all the four turfs used in Dubai during this tournament.  The match was won and lost there for all practical purposes.

And when Rohit and Shubman Gill stitched up that century partnership, the match further moved away from the battling Kiwis. The small tremor after the first wicket fell was never really going to unsettle this team of confident hustlers who bat pretty deep with 8 batsmen of proven merit. That India made only one change to its team in the entire tournament —bringing in Varun Chakravarthy in place of Harshit Rana from its 3rd match — showed how much clarity it had in its well-thought-out campaign.

Varun himself was something of a from-the-left-field selection into the squad — a late but inspired inclusion based on his spirited show in that short white-ball series against England early this year. And playing him in that inconsequential league encounter against NZ, in which he sensationally picked up 5 wickets, helped India seal that one final piece of that winning jigsaw. He picked 9 wickets in 3 matches and must have been a close contender for the Man of the Series award that was bestowed on Rachin Ravindra.

A gamble with the tweakers

No team in recent memory has won a major championship with a four-pronged frontline spin attack. The wickets were not rank turners. It is just that the Indian tweakers led by the veteran Jadeja (who was also part of India's winning team in 2013 CT) knew how to shackle the batters on such surfaces.

Seeing the likes of Kane Williamson, Glenn Phillips, Daryl Mitchell, and Tom Latham—otherwise, the cricketers of a quick-scoring vintage—reduced to pinching singles and occasional twos was a masterclass in pristine, parsimonious slow bowling.

As per a statistic on ESPN Cricinfo, Indian spinners bowled 81 balls without conceding a boundary between the 14th and 27th overs. Such tight grip on the proceedings meant that the team did not miss its glorious pace ace Jasprit Bumrah who was sidelined due to the injury he sustained during India's disastrous Test tour to Australia. That another spinning-all rounder Washington Sundar, in good rhythm this season, was not even needed showcases India's talent cupboard in bright relief.  

And what of Indian batsmen? The consistency and calmness of Shreyas Iyer in the middle — though he did not make a hundred in the tournament, he was the most assured of the top batters — and the astuteness of KL Rahul ensured that the top three of Rohit, Gill, and Virat Kohli could opt for calculated aggression.

The innings of Rohit in the final, which handed India the trophy, was built on the confidence that the in-form presence of Shreyas and Rahul offered. For Rahul, this assured showing should quieten his detractors who had been chattering incessantly since that WC finals. Kohli too seems to have proved a thing or two to his critics. Even though he failed on the night, he had done enough in the previous matches to leave his indelible imprint in this successful campaign. 

This near-perfect victorious march also pops the question if this is the best-ever phase for India in the short forms. Without a doubt, this is among the most profitable periods for Indian cricket. It now is the holder of two major ICC trophies, and it also made the finals of the World Cup and the WTC. In the shorter format games, India has defeated its opponents in 22 of its last 23 completed matches. The lone loss, of course, came on that baleful night of 19 November 2023 in the ICC World Cup Final.

Despite that slip-up in the finals, which Australia won fair and square, it was India's tournament, and the remarkable consistency with which it steamrolled across all opponents (including Australia, by the way) till that fateful final confirmed that this was a team that was tilting at greatness in the white-ball arena.

Consistency on all fronts

The subsequent sensational showing at the T20 World Cup in the USA and West Indies — again a blemishless record in the tournament in all its completed outings — only reiterated that India had become a well-rounded world-beating juggernaut worthy of comparison with the legendary Windies of the 70s and 80s vintage and the Aussies of the late 90s and 2000s pomp.

They were from different eras and hence attempts at comparisons would lead to the charge of being odious. But without any gainsaying argument, it can be pointed out that this is India's most reliably winning team.

Previously, under Sourav Ganguly and later with the redoubtable MS Dhoni at the helm, India had chalked up some glittering trophy triumphs. But the comprehensive domination that this squad has shown in recent years is unprecedented in Indian annals.

The core of the team has been built around Virat and Rohit. Four players who did duty last night (Rohit, Virat, Hardik, and Ravindra) were also part of the Indian team that lost fecklessly to Pakistan in the CT finals of 2017. In contrast, the fading Babar Azam and the injured Fakar Zaman are the survivors from its ‘17 team). It underlines the age-old cricket truism: if consistency is shown in squad selection, the results are bound to be just that — consistent.

Incidentally, today, 10 March 2025, marks the 40th year of India's most improbable but most convincing win in an international tournament previously — the WCC of 1985. It was a tournament in which India bowled out all the opposing teams except in the finals where it took 9 wickets — in numbers, India took 49 wickets out of the possible 50 in 5 matches. That was how compelling India's performance was in that tournament, in which too India had to make only one change in its team — one that was forced by an injury ahead of the finals. 

But that squad, which also won in the immediate aftermath of the Rothmans Australiasia Cup in Sharjah, never established subsequent suzerainty. The 1983 World Cup team was humiliated by the West Indies in the same year when it later toured India. The 2011 WC winners quickly scooped up the 2013 CT in England. But Dhoni's outfit, successful as it was, did not evoke the awe that the current one does.

This one has been built on bricks of talent, hard work, and creative vision. Case in point: Playing Axar at number 5 in the batting line-up. It was not a desperate pinch-hitting trick, especially with more established batsmen to follow. But a well-thought-out idea to make him play the situation using the left-right combination to unsettle bowlers. On some days, Axar will drop anchor. On others, he will go for the leather. It is a strategy that is the antithesis of the one-note Baazball idea. This one has solidity and sincerity at its core.

Overall, this is a team that, with the no-nonsense Gautam Gambhir as the coach, looks ready to take on all comers on any surface. And more than anything else it has slayed the demons of the WC 2023 finals defeat, and also proved, in the process, that it was an unfortunate aberration.

And that makes this triumph a double delight!