In the end India found a superior opponent here, a team with deeper gears and with a mania to run right to the end. As is their wont, Rohit Sharma’s team stayed in the fight for as long as possible with the contrasting playing conditions in the two halves but the World Cup kept moving away, the craft and winning habits of Australia starting to intrude like a firm hand on the elbow as the game ticked down to the final rites.
When Glenn Maxwell sent the final arrow through his World Cup bubble, Rohit cut a despondent figure. He quietly shook hands with his team, then repeated the exercise with his vanquishers on the night and made a quick and lonely walk up the stairs to the dressing room while the rest of his teammates behind him were still finishing this exercise and milling about the boundary line.
Just the day before, the Indian captain had spoken about how the sport was exciting and how he was witness to myriad emotions in the dressing room. Twenty-four hours later, the mood in the camp could be painted with a single broad brushstroke of blue. Mohammed Siraj broke down and was consoled by a disconsolate Jasprit Bumrah. KL Rahul just sank to his knees. Virat Kohli sunk his face into his cap and unsure of what to do, knocked over the bails at one end. Ravindra Jadeja did the same at the other.
And so: exit music. India’s glorious campaign will make the highlights and the stats pages but won’t result in another star on the shirt or a place in the annals of the World Cup winners. The night will have been rough, the morning after will be tinged with disappointment. But after the hurt and the angst, there will be a time for introspection. Because the wheels of Indian cricket will continue to keep spinning fast. Such is the nature of the international cricketing calendar that in three nights, an Indian team will take on an Australian team in the first of a five-match T20I series in Visakhapatnam, setting in motion the journey to another World Cup, in the USA and the Caribbean, in seven months’ time.
Rohit, Kohli, Rahul and Mohammed Shami have not played an international T20 since the heartbreak before this heartbreak, in Adelaide 2022. Jadeja and Mohammed Siraj played their last T20Is even before that. None of them have given up the format but Indian teams in the shortest format have since appeared to have moved on in a different but undefined direction under Hardik Pandya’s leadership. He is, of course, currently injured. Suryakumar Yadav was named Hardik’s deputy in the West Indies while Bumrah led in a short series against Ireland. Then there was a Ruturaj Gaikwad-led side that won gold at the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Might Rohit or Kohli, on evidence of their batting feats in this World Cup, hold out seven months for another crack at an ICC silverware that has proved to be agonisingly elusive over the last decade. Will the failure to breast the tape at the finish line in Ahmedabad have taken that decision away from their hands? In which case, the ongoing Test Championship and the Champions Trophy in 2025 might be the only realistic chance for a final redemptive finish, and even the latter might be touch and go.
It is hard to imagine either Rohit or Kohli being around for the 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa. Rohit will be touching 40 and Kohli will be 39. Jadeja and Shami will be 38 and 37 respectively. In fact, at 31 years and 174 days, India fielded the third oldest (by average age) playing XI at a World Cup final. And so a succession plan would seem imminent.
The early rumblings of India’s dominant campaign until the final here was seen in Australia last year but the Rahul Dravid – Rohit Sharma combination hadn’t had enough time to get the buy-in of the entire team towards the brand of white-ball cricket they wanted India to be playing. It took an additional year and India would appear to be playing close to the demands of the modern white-ball game. Neither the captain nor the coach is assured of a long-term project with Dravid stating in the post-game press conference in Ahmedabad that he hasn’t thought about an extension to his national team coaching tenure which has run out at the end of this defeat.
All of this would almost seem like poking at the scab while the wound is still raw. But the great churn of modern Indian cricket does not offer time to pause, take a breath and reflect. The wheels will go spinning round and round, and fast.
