When Virat Kohli’s team triumphed by a massive score line of 5-1 for its first-ever ODI series win in South Africa in 2018, it was the only occasion when an Indian team registered five wins in an ODI series in SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) countries. In fact, there were only two previous instances of a series win (5-0 in Zimbabwe, 2013 and 5-0 in SL, 2017) with five matches outside India. However, a lot has changed for the Indian ODI set-up since then and it won’t be a cakewalk this time for them, even if seven members of the 2018 team are part of the current squad.
More often than not, in every bilateral series there is special focus on only couple of players to deliver to prove themselves individually. However, heading into the ODI series this time around, each and every member of the touring squad is facing a personal challenge to either ascertain themselves once again, re-invent themselves to achieve the past glory or make a great start to their careers.
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And the personal challenge starts with the stand-in captain KL Rahul’s role both as a batsman and as a leader. Rahul led for the first time in international cricket when Virat Kohli was unfit during the second match of the recently concluded three match Test series. In the ODI series, because of the new captain Rohit Sharma’s fitness issues, the Karnataka player is again leading the Indian team in white-ball format. The 29-year-old Rahul has to prove himself as an opener. In the last two years across 15 ODI innings, Rahul has scored three tons and five fifties but there are six innings in between as well where he has failed to go past 20. So, consistency is something the captain will be seeking desperately if India wants to avoid a series defeat in a three-match series starting Wednesday.
Jasprit Bumrah too has been lucky to get the responsibility of vice captaincy because of his Mumbai Indians’ skipper’s absence from the series or else Rahul would have been in his shoes. The Ahmedabad pacer is also not shying away from the talks of future captaincy but right now his main focus could be to rediscover the formidable force he has been in all formats of the game. Last time when Bumrah took a three-wicket haul in ODI was way back in 2019 World Cup in England against Sri Lanka. He didn’t play a single match in 2021, and 2020 wasn’t spectacular for him either with just five wickets in 9 matches. Not only that, his economy rate suffered too (which was 5.62 RPO in this period which was not in sync with his career economy of 4.65) and the champion bowler must be mindful of that aberration.
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Besides Rahul and Bumrah, there is another senior player who may have benefited from Rohit’s absence is his former regular partner Shikhar Dhawan. The Delhi batsman may have captained the team in Sri Lanka last year (when the main team was on England tour for a high-profile Test series) but at the age of 36, he is unlikely to get any more chances if he fails to deliver in the Rainbow Nation.
The Indian spin trio too have contrasting challenges on personal fronts. While the senior most Ravichandran Ashwin is making a comeback in ODI squad after a gap of nearly four years, another offie Jayant Yadav knows that he may not get another chance to prove his credentials in this format. The leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal would be desperate to re-assert his wicket-taking prowess in the middle overs and just to show the world that his exclusion from the T20 World Cup team was an unfair call by the selectors.
Like Ashwin and Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar is another senior member of the current squad who too must be aware of the fact that this series is a golden opportunity for him at this stage of his career. From September 2019 till February 2021, the Meerut pacer didn’t play a single game for India. Since his comeback, Bhuvi has grabbed 9 wickets in just five outings but he has been a bit expensive of late.
While the likes of Ruturaj Gaikwad and Venkatesh Iyer have played the T20Is for India, the ODIs and that too in South Africa will be a different ball game altogether. Ishan Kishan, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Suryakumar Yadav and Deepak Chahar may have played a couple of ODIs each in their career so far but now they need to demonstrate themselves as a serious option in ODI cricket. All of them are in need of a great show in the three-match series.
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Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur and Rishabh Pant are in similar boats despite all of them at different stages of their respective careers. The only thing which is common among them is that they all have played more than 15, but less than 30 ODI matches so far in their journey and are yet to establish themselves completely as an automatic choice in the playing XI. Of course, no one doubts their potential but some match winning efforts against the Proteas may just allow them to settle in this format a little more comfortably.
And last but not the least, the one player who will be cynosure of all eyes in this series who too has to give much needed evidence as the premier batsman of this format is King Kohli. The lack of international hundred for more than two years has put the former India captain under an unusual spotlight as a batsman but more than that all eyes will be on how he adapts in his new role as an elder statesman in this team. In that sense, it will be very interesting to see if Kohli can emulate MS Dhoni’s role in ODI-set up, after the former India captain relinquished the captaincy in 2016, and became Mahi bhai for everyone.
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