India: The World Cup, The Farewell & The Future

When Rohit Sharma lifted the T20 World Cup in Barbados, 140 crore Indians felt that they had achieved something. The feeling of accomplishment was shared and such is the passion for the game in this country. The overwhelming feeling of victory was soon touched and deepened as three of the senior most in the team decided to call it a day. Amidst this disbelief and a harmony of emotions rose a question. What does the future of Indian cricket look like?

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja retired from T20 internationals after winning the world cup. They were the most experienced players of the team leaders who have captained sides at some level. This creates a vacuum at the core of the Indian team and leaves us with the biggest question. Who is going to be our next captain?

The Indian team has produced so much young talent in the last decade that there’s a lot of competition to fill that vacuum. There are contenders for every position but when the shoes are that big to fill, there’s always a tremendous amount of pressure.

Rituraj Gaikwad, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube and a few others have performed excellently whenever they had an opportunity. It is expected from them to be up for the challenge and contribute to the legacy of firebrand cricket played by our greats.

The question of leadership also invokes the question around the brand of cricket India is going to play in the coming years. Under MS Dhoni, India achieved nearly everything but still the team atmosphere changed after Virat’s takeover and India achieved success where they had never.

With Virat and Rohit gone, will there be a shift from the aggressive nature of the game that India played, under a new captain. With a new captain and a new head coach, a lot can change and it would be interesting to find how much the team wants to change given the success they have just achieved.