India aren't the perfect T20I team, but they might be the greatest ever
The only gap in their line-up is bowlers with the ability to hit sixes, and that's something they might have to live with for the moment
Sidharth Monga
04-Feb-2025
If it hadn't actually happened, you would struggle to imagine the kind of dominance India have displayed in T20Is. It is a fickle, high-variance format. The shorter the duration of the game, the smaller the gap in quality between opponents. India have won 43 of their 53 completed T20Is since the start of 2023. This includes an unbeaten T20 World Cup campaign during which they went from the seam-bowling paradise of New York to the flatties in the Caribbean Islands to spin-friendly Guyana and back to high-scoring Barbados, getting the better of eight different teams.
Take out the first half of this unimaginable run, and we are talking of stuff beyond fantasies. Since the start of 2024, India have won 28 and lost three. Surely there should be some mean reversion around the corner? Surely India have enjoyed too much luck? Surely this run should be unsustainable?
And they are missing at least two of their first XI players. Two players who are the kind of point-of-difference bowlers franchises break the bank for. It is scary to think how good India can get if you add Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav to the line-up that just beat a full-strength England 4-1. We finally have in front of our eyes a team worthy of representing a country that runs the best non-international T20 tournament. A country with hitting talent that was just waiting to be unleashed on the world should their national team dare to shed muscle-memory conservatism.
However, in these three - and other strike bowlers India have - lay their only weakness. Bumrah, Kuldeep, Varun, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Ravi Bishnoi - none of them can be relied upon to hit a six. The way Jofra Archer or Adil Rashid or Mark Wood can. Or Mitchell Starc or Pat Cummins. Or Kagiso Rabada or Marco Jansen or even Anrich Nortje.
This weakness forced Tilak Varma to tamper with his game in the Chennai chase, which he did successfully. However, you can't go in with fewer than three strike bowlers. Especially when they are as good as Bumrah, Kuldeep, Varun and Arshdeep. It is a weakness India will have to live with unless one or two of them can do the unthinkable and build six-hitting prowess the way R Ashwin has at the fag end of his career. However, none of them has the inherent batting ability of Ashwin, so this might be too tall an ask.
Yet, all things being equal, add Bumrah, Kuldeep, Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal to the current squad, and India should start as strong favourites in the 2026 T20 World Cup. There can still be a crucial toss lost or horrible dew or that 130 all out on a big night, but should India become the first team to successfully defend their title in men's T20 World Cups, they will seal their status as the greatest T20 team ever assembled. To many, they already might be.
Sidharth Monga is a senior writer at ESPNcricinfo