by Sushant Singh When Team India boarded the flight to the UK, there were a lot of headaches which could have possibly turned into migraines, one of which was the "No. 4" conundrum. Apart from these, some of our gun players were out of form: for example, Rohit Sharma had a miserable IPL; Virat Kohli's team, the Royal Challengers Bangalore finished dead last, and Rishabh Pant, who took the IPL by storm, was not selected in the squad. We may have been considered joint-favourites for the coveted trophy, but deep inside we were fidgety. Our first match was five days late, for which BCCI faced plenty of flak. We had two warm up matches before the tournament kicked off. We lost to New Zealand courtesy left-arm seamer Trent Boult. He exposed our lacuna against quality swing bowling. Since the IPL is a long tournament, which is all about "flat track bullies", the batsmen have a tendency to struggle when they face quality swing bowling immediately after that. However, the second warm up match catered to our confidence. Dhoni scored a brisk hundred, which was the clincher. Our initial fixtures were tough. We had to play South Africa, Australia and Pakistan. When we played South Africa, we knew that SA was wounded by losing to Bangladesh. They batted first and Bumrah was on point from ball one. He removed Quinton de Kock and Hashim Amla early, and SA relinquished control against our spin twins, KulCha (Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal). Chahal tore through their batting and they ended up on 227-9, a below par score. Rohit took charge of the chase and we got over the line without breaking a sweat. Next up were the mighty Kangaroos and we were wary of the challenge they present in high-stakes affairs. We batted first and posted a formidable total, courtesy a Dhawan special. With the ball, our quicks bamboozled the Aussies at crucial moments. A belligerent Carey saved the Aussies from ignominious defeat. Our next affair versus New Zealand was a damp squib, quite literally; the match was abandoned without a ball being bowled. We had to be satisfied with one point. The next stop in our invincible journey was our arch rivals Pakistan. They were trampled by the Windies in their last match and we leveraged this to our advantage and handed them another defeat in the world cup. With this win, we took the head-to-head tally to 7-0. By this time, we were riding high and Afghanistan was the next roadblock. Everyone expected it to be a one sided match, but it turned out to be a classic. The Afghans pushed us to the limit and we won by a whisker. After Afghanistan, we were in no mood to take any team lightly and Windies faced the brunt of it and we bulldozed our way past Windies. By this time, every team had lost at least one match and it appeared that we were invincible. On 30th June, it was time for El Clasico. We had toppled England to become the top seed in ODI rankings, after they lost to Australia. It was the do-or-die game for the English and they meant business right from the get-go. They were circumspect against our quick bowlers, who initially were breathing fire. After the first powerplay, openers Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow unleashed and took our spinners to the cleaners, who were impressive till then. Dhoni's glove work was below par and Ben Stokes blitzkrieg ensured a stiff total. When India's chase commenced, we were always behind the asking rate, due to Woakes's accurate spell with the new ball. Kohli and Rohit were motoring along well, until an untimely dismissal of Kohli jolted India's boat. We had hardly recovered from that blow and Rohit departed as well, and the chase would fizzle out soon enough. There wasn't much intent shown in the last 10 overs and the experts castigated Dhoni and Jadhav for that. We are still in the box seat for a spot in the semi finals and we have our last two encounters against our neighbours: Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Considering the way these two have played, we just cannot afford to be lax.
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