T20 World Cup 2024: India's win over Pakistan should raise concerns, not optimism

Another World Cup. Another India-Pakistan game comes and goes with the inevitable result, flashing TV screens around the world, which is of the former beating the latter and making the day more exciting for what preceded the match as the fans brought in the colour and excitement and packed the Dubai International Stadium on Sunday.

The match was a must-win for India, who were coming off a humbling loss to New Zealand on Friday and led by the bowlers, they had ensured they were halfway there after reducing Pakistan to 105 for 8 in their 20 overs.

A total of 106, in either international or franchise T20 cricket, should be a cakewalk for a team batting second, if the surface had not developed demons in the mid-innings break. And for India, who were not just chasing a win, but a win to improve their net run-rate to kickstart their tournament, tracking the total down as quickly as possible would have been the best possible way to enter the second week of the tournament, brimming with confidence.

Instead, as the afternoon sun gave way to the evening twilight in Dubai, most Indian supporters who were looking forward to some boundaries and sixes were left questioning the mindset behind the chase. The pitch did not turn square, Pakistan did what most expected them to do- strangle India with spin and try and take pace off- and as the innings wore on, there was nothing to suggest that the pitch had worsened.

Ever since her T20I debut in 2019, Shafali Verma's performances, at the heart of a T20 innings when the ball is new and the field is up, have flattered to deceive. The 20-year-old has played 83 T20I innings and for someone whose batting many said suited the demands of T20 cricket and could offer a breath of fresh air in the Powerplay overs, her strike-rate stands at 129.45.

On Sunday, India needed the version of Verma that was thought to lead the line of a new, more fearless generation of Indian women cricketers. Instead, what we saw was a timid effort, with 50 per cent of the runs coming in singles, with three boundaries and no sixes sprinkled in her batting show. The slow nature of any pitch demands batters to be cautious, but it also wishes for batters to be unafraid in taking the odd risk, to let the fielding team know that they have sussed the situation and had a greater control of the game.

With India needing not just a win, but one by a sizeable balls to spare, Verma's approach to the victory, that did not involve even an attempt to take risks, was perplexing to say the least and smacked of the one thing that every junior coach must inculcate in any young cricketer: game awareness.

When she departed for a pain staking 32 runs off 35 balls, India needed 44 runs off 49 balls. They were favourites to win, but not before they had kept Pakistan in the game. They eventually got there in the penultimate over of the innings, but Smriti Mandhana's words after the game about the approach to get there only summed up the confusion, further.

"Better start with the bat would have been good, but we will take that win. [NRR] We did think about it. Me and Shafali could not time the ball . We didn't want to end up losing a lot of wickets. We were a little calculative," Mandhana said.

A calculative approach would have involved taking an additional risk or two, it may have involved showing some dare to advance down the track to the medium pacer and hitting them to different parts of the ground. We saw none of that and it felt very evidently as though India were merely chasing the points, with no eye on qualification scenarios just yet.

The approach to chasing 106 was even more baffling, considering India had batting until number 8. With the batting depth cushion, there was license to go flat out at the top with the knowledge that there were other batters in the line-up to finish the job. But by not revealing this side to their game and instead opting to merely get a win on board, India exposed a flaw within their own team, of perhaps not possessing the self-belief to win a match where the stakes were higher than in a normal T20 game.

That this performance came at the end of a week when the whole of India and the global cricketing world had praised their male counterparts for pulling off an improbable win against Bangladesh at Kanpur, only further made Sunday's showing an unwanted sight for fans.