India will be hard nuts to crack at Champions Trophy if they play close to their close to their terrific potential

Quickly… When was the last time India went into a major cricket event without the tag of favourites hanging ominously over their heads?

Think, and then think some more, and we will probably zero in on the 1983 World Cup, inarguably the decisive turning point in Indian cricket. Allow the crease lines to become more prominent, for the brows to furrow deeper, and the 2007 T20 World Cup will come into sharp focus. It was a tournament India’s biggies at the time – Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid – stayed away from. It was also the tournament that marked the second seminal moment for the sport in the country, the tournament that made an instant success of the now unstoppable force that the Indian Premier League has become.

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There is no danger of India not attracting favouritism with edition nine of the Champions Trophy, the one-time mini World Cup now struggling for context, imminent. Never mind that they were hammered at home in three consecutive Tests by New Zealand in October-November. Never mind that Australia bested them 3-1 to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after a gap of eight years. Never mind that Jasprit Bumrah, that magician non-pareil, won’t be around to terrorise limbs, to destroy egos and confidence, to shatter toes and stumps.

India aren’t just the sentimental favourites, they are also the No. 1 team in the world in 50-over cricket. They are coming off a commanding 3-0 drubbing of Jos Buttler’s England , a result that, on the back of the 4-1 victory by the Suryakumar Yadav-led T20 outfit , lifted some of the pall of gloom that had descended after the New Zealand-Australia one-two punch in Tests.

They boast two of the greatest limited-overs batters to have graced the sport, they have an impactful, fearless and aggressive middle order, they have a host of all-rounders capable of turning matches on the back of a single discipline alone, they have a veritable assortment of finger- and wrist-spinners.

An unsettled fast-bowling unit

What India don’t have is a pedigreed, settled fast-bowling unit. Some of it is due to Bumrah’s injury, some of it is their own doing. By opting for Harshit Rana ahead of the more experienced and proven Mohammed Siraj , India have left themselves extremely light on that count.

Mohammed Shami has only just started to play competitively after 14 months in the wilderness following a heel injury that required surgery. While he has shown no little promise in the brief time back with the team, it will be silly to expect him to do the same kind of heavy lifting as Bumrah, or as he himself did at the 50-over World Cup in 2023, where he finished as the leading wicket-taker despite missing the first four matches through no fault of his.

There is skepticism over whether a ‘house divided’, as India are alleged to be in certain quarters , can set its differences aside and come together for the greater good, for a laudable common cause. Whispers of divisions within the side and tension between the players tend to take a life of their own when things don’t go well.

Predictably, the first talk of the lack of camaraderie and team spirit surfaced when the team was stumbling and spluttering in Australia. While it’s not as if all the players are best buddies with one another, they are wise enough and skilled enough to set any potential differences of opinion aside and rally behind each other when it comes to the crunch. Which is why one of the more unanswerable sporting questions holds such intrigue: Is a winning team a happy one, or is a happy team more likely to win?

If India play anywhere close to their terrific potential, they will be hard nuts to crack. They weren’t at their absolute best against England over the last fortnight, understandable because they hadn’t played 50-over cricket internationally since last August. But despite not firing on all cylinders, they packed such a mighty punch that Buttler’s men were scrambling for cover. A familiar English pattern of a brisk and sturdy start devolving into a middle-order mess emerged over the three games in Nagpur, Cuttack and Ahmedabad, and it is this pattern that will give Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir the belief that they can lord the middle overs, often the difference between victory and defeat.

It’s in this phase of the match that Rohit can bank on one of Kuldeep Yadav or Varun Chakravarthy to come up trumps. In an ideal scenario, the captain would love to have both the left-arm wrist-spinner and the right-arm leggie with a pronounced recent slant towards overspin as opposed to sidespin operating in tandem. But neither is a truly accomplished bat – Varun is perhaps only slightly better than a rabbit – and India like to have depth and muscle throughout the order, given their penchant for going hard at the bowling from the get-go.

Pandya, Jadeja and Axar provide depth and muscle

Depth and muscle is precisely what Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel provide – both facets in their batting, depth and guile and a bit of the maverick in their bowling – with Washington Sundar currently only a fringe option. Their versatility makes this trio indispensable; they will form the influential engine room in both disciplines, perhaps all three, and for India to go deep in the tournament, they will need at least two of these three to make an impact in every single game.

India’s selection calls will largely stem around Kuldeep vs Chakravarthy and Rana vs Arshdeep Singh. One might say there isn’t much to choose between either pairs, but Arshdeep seems a more natural fit than Rana because of his ability to swing the ball back into the right-hander from a left-arm over angle. While he might be only nine ODIs old to Rana’s three, he is already India’s leading wicket-taker in T20Is and just a breath or two away from becoming the first Indian to take 100 wickets in 20-over internationals.

Rana is the first Indian to take three wickets on international debut in each of the three formats, but the jury is still out on whether he can be a consistent threat with the ball at this stage of his career. At one point, his batting was touted as a calling card but that is no longer the case and it won’t be until he has a few knocks worth the name at the highest level under his belt. In any case, given that India have ‘proper’ batters until No. 8, a pseudo-No. 9 is neither a requirement nor a non-negotiable. The smart money will be on Arshdeep to start the tournament against Bangladesh on Thursday, but if one is the ‘smart’ sort, it’s best to let the money be in their own trousers.

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The rest of the XI picks itself, notwithstanding the highly artificial KL Rahul vs Rishabh Pant debate. Even a cursory look at their stats should settle the issue but those inclined to dig deeper will realise exactly how stunning the older right-hander’s record is in 50-over cricket as a middle-order wicketkeeper-batter.

Pant, the beast-mode Test batter, still has some demons to slay in white-ball cricket and it’s best not to allow him to engage in that exercise during a tournament as significant as the Champions Trophy.