Over the years, Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri have been synonymous with the Indian cricket team, helping the Men in Blue reach new heights across formats.
India were the No 1 Test team under the captaincy of Kohli when Shastri was head coach, and the Men in Blue, under Kohli, reached the semi-final of the ICC World Cup 2019 in England (Where they lost to New Zealand), as well as reaching the World Test Championship final in 2021, where they lost to New Zealand again.
In the last few years, Team India have also proved themselves a strong unit in overseas conditions, winning two Test series Down Under in 2018/19 and 2020/21. And yet, what eludes India is a major international trophy since 2013, the year when they won the ICC Champions Trophy.
India had almost every department settled in the 2019 World Cup, but according to former fielding coach R Sridhar, a consistent batter at the No 4 position is what eluded Team India. India opted with several players in that number four position, but things did not always go to plan for the Men in Blue.
Ambati Rayudu, who had played a lot of international cricket around the time, including the 2018 Asia Cup and India’s tour of New Zealand in 2019, was surprisingly dropped from the World Cup squad. Vijay Shankar was brought into the squad in injured Shikhar Dhawan’s absence, and KL Rahul, who was had already begun batting at No 4, was promoted to the openers’ slot along with Rohit Sharma. Vijay Shankar continued to bat at No 4, but a foot injury to the Tamil Nadu all-rounder meant he was replaced by Rishabh Pant in that slot.
“Many of the decisions we took didn’t yield the desired result, though the biggest mistake was something that came about despite the lack of time pressure. I am referring, of course, to the No. 4 position for the 2019 World Cup, although we had four full years from 2015 to identify and get someone settled at that pivotal spot.
“No. 4 is such a crucial position in the batting order. He is expected to be the kind of player who takes the baton from the openers, from the top three, it on to the finishers. You need to have someone who and passes can strike at 80-90 per 100 balls for the most part and finishes his innings with a strike rate of 100. It’s an acquired skill; it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Unfortunately, we didn’t give anyone a chance to settle down, fail and learn,” Sridhar wrote in his book Coaching Beyond: My Days with the Indian Cricket Team.
Sridhar went on to add that multiple factors contributed to the ‘blunder’. “We wanted results immediately and so if someone failed in two or three games, we moved on to the next guy. I really have no excuses; we had the same batting coach (Sanjay Bangar) for that entire period, the same fielding coach (yours truly) for the entirety except for the tour of the West Indies in 2016.
“The head coach (Ravi Shastri) and the bowling coach (Bharat Arun) weren’t around for a year when Anil Kumble was in charge. But all told, we had ample time to button down a suitable candidate for that position. To me, in hindsight, the inability to do so was a mistake that was very much controllable; this was a process-driven mistake. Multiple factors contributed to a blunder that would come back and bite us when it mattered the most,” he added in the book.
Sridhar was confident that current India captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid would not make the same mistake.
“I agree that was out of character for a support group which got a lot of other things right. I mean, we are talking about Ravi, Sanjay, Arun, Virat and myself it was a shocker from us. We were unsuccessful in giving anyone the confidence to grow into that position, and it was no surprise that when it mattered the most, we were found wanting. Perhaps we got carried away by the fact that we had a gun top-three-Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli — and two exceptional finishers in MS and Hardik, and therefore overlooked the significance of No. 4.
“When push came to shove, we couldn’t respond. I know it’s not my place to say so, but there is a lesson in it for think tanks going forward. I can say with reasonable confidence that I don’t see Rohit and Rahul Dravid making the same mistake,” the 52-year-old added.
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