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Former Indian T20 World Cup-winning captain Rohit Sharma saw it coming, and on September 22, the day finally arrived. Japan’s slow bowlers caught the Indian team by surprise. With moisture on both the pitch and the outfield, India opted to bat but could manage only 32 runs for the loss of five wickets.
Every Indian batter seemed intent on hoiking the ball towards the boundary. The pitch turned and bounced without much pace, and that was enough to keep the Indian batters at bay.
Right from the moment India came out to bat after winning the toss, things began to go wrong. Abhishek Sharma, the man with the golden bat who has scored one of the fastest T20 centuries in the history of the game, was dismissed without troubling the scorers.
The pitch was so conducive to spin that even Washington Sundar managed to extract considerable turn from it. Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan, too, were seen struggling to find their rhythm. It was only captain Shreyas Iyer who produced something noteworthy with the bat. Without his knock, India could have been in dire straits.
Throughout Japan’s chase, there was a palpable sense that India could lose the game. Our hearts were in our mouths. A 10-run over from Ravi Bishnoi, however, gave the home team a ray of hope and reduced the equation to almost a run a ball.
After losing to Ireland and England, we all thought that a 3-0 series win over Afghanistan represented a form of redemption. But this Suzuki Cup scare against Japan was nothing short of an embarrassment.
And it raises a larger question: what is the point of sending some of our best players to the Asian Games when they can be made to struggle against teams featuring relatively lesser-known names?
For a team of India’s stature, the lesson from September 22 should not simply be that Japan bowled well. It should be that complacency, poor shot selection and an inability to adapt to unfamiliar conditions can make even the strongest side look ordinary.
