India bring that 2007 Aussie World Cup aura

Since the end of the 2024 T20 World Cup, 11 Full-Member batters have 150-plus strike rates against both pace and spin in T20Is, with a minimum of 50 balls faced against both kinds of bowling.

Four of the 11 are India batters.

That won't surprise anyone. India are world champions in this format, and they have, by common consensus, become an even more formidable team while building up to their title defence. One of their means of doing this has been a frightening powering-up with the bat. During this World Cup cycle, they've surpassed 250 three times. So have Zimbabwe, but they've done it against Seychelles, Gambia and Botswana. In all other Full-Member-versus-Full-Member T20I cricket in this period, there have only been two other 250-plus totals.

So yes, four India batters are in that list of 150-plus strike rates against both pace and spin. Big deal. Tell me something new.

Look at who they are, though. There is, of course, Abhishek Sharma. That's a given. But the other three?

Shivam Dube, whose perceived shortcomings were, until recently, a far more frequent subject of discourse than his strengths.

Suryakumar Yadav, who, during this World Cup cycle, has gone through the worst trough of his international career.

Yashasvi Jaiswal, a superstar-in-waiting who continues to wait because there's no room for him in India's top order. Or their T20 World Cup squad.

You want to know how good India are, leading up to this tournament? Look at the numbers of their players who are either out of form or aren't guaranteed starters.

Take those of Sanju Samson during this cycle: 305 runs against spin at an average of 50.83 and a strike rate of 172.31, and if he's had issues against pace, it isn't the worst kind of struggle to be averaging 21.00 and striking at 146.15.

Samson is in danger of losing his place in India's World Cup starting XI, but that's mostly because the guy he's competing with, Ishan Kishan, has recent numbers so absurd that he didn't make our 150/150 list only because he hasn't yet faced 50 balls of spin in this World Cup cycle. If we relaxed our qualification criteria to 40 balls against both kinds of bowling, Kishan would sit right on top of our list, with a strike rate of 215.68 against pace and 250.00 against spin.

This guy isn't a guaranteed starter for India.

And if they play a lot of their World Cup games on flat pitches without a lot of help for the spinners, India could quite conceivably go through the tournament without ever selecting Kuldeep Yadav. He has the second-best average of all Full-Member bowlers with 20-plus wickets in this cycle. He also has the second-best average of all Full-Member bowlers ever, with 50-plus career wickets. Only Rashid Khan is ahead of him on both counts.

Kuldeep was an integral part of India's attack when they won the T20 World Cup two years ago, playing all their Super Eights and knockout games. As a wicket-taking, game-breaking wristspinner with recent experience of winning a global tournament, he'd walk into most teams in the world.

Varun Chakravarthy, however, would walk into pretty much every team in the world. Most big teams at this World Cup have one or maybe two players of whom you could make that sort of claim. India have at least four, in Abhishek, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, and Varun. In Asian conditions, you might throw in Axar Patel too. And before his recent dip in form - which, going by recent trends, may be behind him - Suryakumar would have easily made that list.

Those six names cover pretty much every category of player that a T20 side needs. Explosive opener; 360-degree middle-order innovator; hard-hitting pace-bowling allrounder; wily fingerspin-bowling allrounder; quick, accurate, wicket-taking wristspinner; all-phase fast-bowling phenomenon.

And, as established earlier, the others in India's line-up, and the ones who can't even get into it, are pretty good too.

No wonder, then, that India have been churning out win-loss numbers that make a mockery of T20's inherent capriciousness. They've gone 31-6 (including two Super-Over wins) in Full-Member-versus-Full-Member contests during this World Cup cycle, which is upwards of five wins to every defeat. This while often resting big names or experimenting with their combination. The next-best teams have gone at two wins per defeat.

Perhaps the instructive parallel here is Australia in the ODI cycle between the World Cups they won in 2003 and 2007. Like India have done now in T20Is, they dominated one World Cup, going through it undefeated, and became even better by the time the next one came around. Between those tournaments, their win-loss record in ODIs was nearly twice as good as that of the next-best team, Pakistan.

India carry a similar sort of aura into this tournament. Never before has a T20 World Cup begun with one team this heavily favoured to win it. If this was a year-long, 20-team, home-and-away league, it would be close to inconceivable that any other team would win. India are that far ahead of the pack.

This, however, is a T20 World Cup rather than a T20 World League, and it will take place over a month rather than a year. A lot of things could potentially go wrong for India just when a lot of things happen to click into place for another team or two. It's the beauty of short tournaments with knockout phases, where the vagaries of form and conditions can have an outsize influence on results.

India know how this works. November 19 will never leave them. That date is the other thing they carry into this T20 World Cup. They've seen these things before: overwhelming favourites, playing at home, pretty much every base covered. They've seen all that and experienced November 19.

That, then, could be the task before every other team that fancies itself to lift this World Cup: to sear another seismic date onto the minds of India's fans, and leave a scar that will never fully heal.