India’s SRK paradox: Box office at home, dud in SENA countries

Before India’s five-match ODI series against New Zealand, Gautam Gambhir had issued a premonition. After a dead-rubber T20I defeat at Seddon Park, he declared: “If we do well in the ODI series, the credit will go to this bowling attack. In batting, we have experience.”

Only two active cricketers feature in the ODI run-scorers’ top 30, both Indian – Virat Kohli, second with 15,190 runs and Rohit Sharma, seventh with 12,143. Then there is Shubman Gill. Since his debut eight years ago, no batter has scored north of 3000 ODI runs at an average of 60 sans the Indian captain.

This is the SRK assemblage – Shubman, Rohit, Kohli – likely to set foot in South Africa eleven months from now for a World Cup of righting wrongs and mending broken hearts. On paper, indisputable. On closer inspection, as Gambhir himself conceded on Friday, apocryphal. Chasing 334, India folded for 89.

At a sombre postmortem of a press conference, Gambhir picked through the wreckage almost as if speaking to himself.

What might have caused the collapse? Unplayable deliveries? He would have none of it. “There are no unplayable deliveries, to be honest. In international cricket, you should be able to cope with any kind of deliveries.” Wobble seam? Nothing doing, still. “We create these terms like wobble seam, scrambled seam, cross seam. Ultimately, it’s the batsman’s job to negate movement. We know that there’s always help in the first 10 overs. ”

Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill in action. (FILE – PTI)

He then named a pattern. “It wasn’t just this match. If you look back at the previous match too, there as well, we were seven down for 111.”

Acknowledgement is the first step towards rectification, which the coach pledged to embark on from this very day. The problem sits oddly beside the record. Since the 2023 ODI World Cup final, batting has been among India’s stronger suits. No team has a better home average and strike rate than India’s 47.07 and 110.27. In the first 10 overs at home, the figures climb to 66.45 and 101.53.

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Overseas reality

The slide in SENA countries demands stronger language; ‘chalk and cheese’ will not do justice. India’s powerplay average falls to 25.70 and the strike rate to 71.39, and in both measures they rank third – only from the bottom.

The individual numbers are “concerning”, to borrow Gambhir’s words. For every argument against retirement that Rohit has made at home, with 356 runs in the first ten overs at an average of 59.3 and a strike rate of 104.4, he has fed an equal, if not larger, party of the opposite persuasion – 126 runs at 25.20 and 66.32 in SENA countries.

His dismissal on Friday, undone by the marriage of pace and outswing, did little to advertise his experience of 295 ODIs. It was his second duck of the series and the fourth time he has departed inside the powerplay in a SENA country in the last four years, in only six matches.

Kohli’s figures are more damning still. No Indian batter has scored more hundreds or fifties than the 38-year-old since November 19, 2023. The greater mystery is his logic-defying record in the first 10 overs in SENA nations: 51 runs at the cost of five wickets, an average of 10.20 and a strike rate of 78.46. His wicket on Friday had elements that witnesses have grown familiar with, a perplexed batter beaten by an inswinger and the sound of timber behind him.

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Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in action. (FILE photo)

Gill, away in Tauranga preparing for the Tests, might count his stars. His powerplay returns in SENA conditions do not flash the same distress signal as those of his two predecessors in the lineage of Indian captaincy, but they warrant scrutiny nonetheless. Since the 2023 World Cup, he has been dismissed four times for 144 runs, averaging 36. At home, the contrast is stark: two dismissals in 264 runs, at an average of 132.

Gambhir identified one possible explanation, though hardly the only one. “It was that length where you couldn’t go forward, you couldn’t go back. So it was that half-and-half length. So we had to be probably more committed towards it, rather than getting stuck on the crease.”

Recognising the problem is one thing; finding a remedy is quite another. Time, for him and the triad alike, is a luxury. The countdown has begun. South Africa beckons.

India’s top three in the first 10 overs in SENA countries since the 2023 World Cup

Player	Matches	Runs	Balls	Outs	Average	Strike Rate
Shubman Gill	8	144	177	4	36	81.36
Rohit Sharma	9	126	190	5	25.20	66.32
Virat Kohli	7	51	65	5	10.20	78.46