T20 World Cup: India badly need an anchorman now that Kohli is gone

In the final years of Virat Kohli’s T20I career, a muted refrain was whether his somewhat modest strike rate in the region of 120-plus was good enough for the new cutting edge batting demands of the shortest format. The Indian think tank had, in fact, embarked on a new gameplan with neither Kohli or Rohit Sharma for their campaign in the 2024 campaign but then changed tack – and the rest is history.

It’s been one and-a-half years since the chase master last turned up in an Indian shirt in a T20I in the World T20 final and one thought that the Men in Blue had moved on with their new and successful gung ho brand of cricket. However, the meek capitulation of Suryakumar Yadav’s men against a clinical South Africa on Sunday—which has put the hosts at a risk of losing the semi-final spot—has underlined the importance of Kohli during chases in a high pressure World Cup joust.

The lament, suddenly ringing loud among the experts and social media, are not just emotional calls—but based on cold statistics dug by the broadcasters. The steep target of 188 set up by the Proteas at Ahmedabad would have been a record chase which India floundered but on all three occasions when they chased down a 160-target in T20 World Cup history, Kohli anchored them and went on to become the Player of the Match on each occasion.

The sequence runs like this: Kohli scored an unbeaten 72 against South Africa in 2014, helping his side successfully chase down 173; then an unbeaten 82 against Australia at home in 2016  the team chased 161. The last time he did it was while chasing 160 against Pakistan in the 2022 edition played in Australia where Kohli delivered with an unbeaten masterclass of 82, the highlight being the famous six he smashed off an express Haris Rauf.

Each innings stood out like a manual on handling pressure—built on finding gaps, running the hard singles to not let the bowlers get on top and then taking calculated risks when time was ripe. While Kohli is spoken of in glowing terms for his chasing in both forms of white ball cricket, it’s also petinent to remember how he soaked in the pressure as an opener in the 2024 World T20 final to score a priceless 76 off 59 balls after India were reduced to 34 for three after Rohit, Rishabh Pant and Surya fell cheaply.

The biggest issue at hand for India, as they look to breathe life into their campaign is: who will play the quintessential anchorman? Gautam Gambhir & Co must have realised it the hard way that it’s one thing to knock off even a 200-plus target in 15 overs in a bi-lateral, but pressure does things to people in an event like a World Cup at home—as one had seen from close quarters in the 2023 ICC World Cup final.

The team management, in it’s own wisdom, has made an excellent player of spin like Shreyas Iyer an untouchable in this format for some time. The opposition seems to have sorted Sky’s style out and the Proteas fed him with slower ones so that he could not get into the rhythm—while Tilak Varma, who handled a crisis of sorts to pilot India past Pakistan in the last Asia Cup, is yet to come good in his first World Cup. A batter with sound cricket sense like Rinku Singh is coming in as late as number eight.

As India look for the answers, a quote from Ravi Shastri sounds pertinent about the importance of being Kohli: ‘’No matter how modern cricket becomes, no matter how many great batsmen come into the Indian team, there will be no one like Virat Kohli. He takes responsibility and turns a 15% chance into a 100% victory for the team’’.