Through the prism of cricket, clearly

As I watched the Australians take control of the 2023 World Cup final, my mind flipped back to two heartbreaking matches I watched in the last century. One was the 1996 semifinal at Eden Gardens, when Sri Lanka strangled India. The other was the 1987 semifinal with England, when Graham Gooch swept Ravi Shastri and Maninder Singh into oblivion at the Wankhede Stadium.

India has lost plenty of key World Cup encounters for a host of different reasons including being outplayed by teams that were just plain stronger. But such losses are not heartbreaking in the same way. One thread that links those three matches was that India was playing on home soil, and it was the favourite to win, and go the distance. In each of those World Cups, India had a great team which had pulled off some dominating performances and the hugely partisan crowds were also a booster.

In 1996, India had actually lost a group match to Sri Lanka as Sanath Jayasuriya carried out one of his patented massacres. But Sri Lanka lost Jayasuriya and his opening partner, Romesh Kaluwitharana, in the first over of the semis. The odds on India shot up within six balls.

There were other parallels. Each match was played on a slow wicket, designed to give India’s spinners traction. On each occasion, the Indians expected to win on the back of some combination of performances by talented individuals.

But India didn’t have a Plan B, and Plan A was just the assumption that individual brilliance would carry the day. The opposition proved the sum of the parts is sometimes greater than the whole, just as India themselves demonstrated in 1983, when they beat a team that was, man for man, superior.
 

In 1987, 1996, and 2023, the opposition did have a Plan A and a Plan B, and maybe a Plan C. They had obviously thought harder about the conditions and worked out specific tactics for specific players. It required standout performances to carry out those plans but the standout performances came from sticking to the plan.

In 1987 England figured out one way to handle left-arm orthodox spin — sweep. Gooch swept his way to an imperious hundred. In 1996, the Lankans decided they would go hell-for-leather with the bat and strangle the opposition’s batting with their slow bowlers. Aravinda De Silva flogged a rapid 66 despite walking in at two wickets down for one run and Muttiah Muralitharan, Jayasuriya, and Kumar Dharmasena produced masterclasses in restrictive slow bowling.

In 2023, well, you probably saw what happened. The Aussie quicks found a way to bowl effectively on a slow, low wicket. Then Travis Head produced a blinder with the bat and Marnus Labuschagne counter-pointed Head’s aggression with an epic, defensive masterpiece to glue one end shut while Head got on top.

Did the Indians really not have concrete game plans for any of those occasions? Did the Indian team management just assume good form, slow wickets, and home crowd support were enough to win a knockout against determined opposition? It sure looked that way.

The great chess player Alexander Alekhine would stand behind his opponents in order to analyse positions from the opponent’s perspective. In cricket, the analogy consists of trying to answer simple questions: How do you try to beat yourself? What do you do if the opposition comes up with an unusual plan? On the basis of the evidence I don’t think this happened on these three occasions.

There was no attempt to change gear, or find new tactics, when the opposition’s plans became apparent. Shastri and Maninder kept bowling into Gooch’s sweep. Virat Kohli and K L Rahul struggled to get the cutters away. Vinod Kambli and Sachin Tendulkar didn’t turn the strike around against the spinners.

1987, 1996, 2023— that’s 36 years spanning two centuries. Half the Indians today were born after Arjuna Ranatunga lifted the cup. But the script looks so similar in those three games.

Cricket is the national religion occupying more mindspace than anything else. Could we argue that relying on individual brilliance, not asking what the opposition might do, and never strategising for a Plan B are three defining national characteristics? It would explain a lot of things.