Indian Cricket has undergone a revolution under Rohit Sharma, with attacking intent up top, in the middle and all through the innings being a critical requirement of being in this team.
The influence was so far massive, it made Virat Kohli, undoubtedly, a legend of the sport, change how he approached T20Is in his final World Cup. Going from building an innings to all out attack, culminating in possibly his best T20I knock ever.
Amidst all the chatter about the modernisation of T20 Cricket, the attacking intent that Indian Cricket has brought to the format recently, a part of their team has flown under the radar. Their bowling. As aggressive as well, it’s not their batting that stands out amongst the rest, it is their bowling.
Always on the hunt for wickets, out there with a positive mindset, to stop runs and take wickets, India have been immensely successful in that aspect capturing the zeitgeist of the fickle format we call T20s.
This is best illustrated by their batting and bowling averages in 2024, while Indian Cricket has competitors with bat in the form of Australia, England and West Indies, nobody has nailed down bowling as well as India.
At just 16.99, India have been dominant and the closest team that has performed well with the ball is Afghanistan, who average a full 3 runs more per wicket. A glaring difference in between the sides, India may not be the best batting side, but they make up for it by being the best bowling team and then some.
The most obvious part is, the difference between the average runs score per wicket lost (Bat Avg) and average runs conceded per wicket taken (Bowl Avg). With a positive difference of 12.37, India are the only team to extend their difference into the double digits, while other teams fall far behind. England, the fourth best team, semi-finalists and India have a difference twice that of England in the averages.
When it comes to the runs conceded per over and runs scored, India excel in this region once more, their difference being 1.38, thrice that of England. Only four teams managed to get away with a positive economy difference and India manage to concede 27.6 runs less than they score in an innings. A massive sum in T20s.
With with ball, India have conceded the lowest runs per over, while scoring at a rate that will match West Indies and England in the best batting teams. Only four teams score more runs per over than they concede them, India, England, Australia and West Indies.
India clearly dominant, conceding the lowest runs per over amongst all the teams involved, a difference of 1.38 just going to highlight the sheer dominance of the team which culminated with a much awaited World Cup title.
The intent India have brought with the bat is further illustrated with a scatter plot, where India are amongst the elite teams producing the best numbers, West Indies, Australia, England and India are in a category of their own, producing stellar batting numbers, topping the run-scoring charts and how quickly they score them.
Whereas the other sides, like Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, South Africa are still to catch up.
While there are four teams that average 25+ and score at more than 8 an over, when we have a look at elite bowling sides, there is only one. India. Their average of 16.99 - the lowest of all sides and their economy of 7.36 - again, lowest of all sides is what makes the Indian team special.
When it comes to elite bowling teams, only India and Afghanistan have managed to output the numbers that would set them far apart. While Afghanistan have bowled well, their batting has struggled for a major part, this is something India have done in much superior terms.
India's World Cup dominance and otherwise dominance in T20s is not just higher intent with the bat, it is a cumulative effort of both bat, that is speeding along and ball, which is seeing an unprecedented rate of success leaving others far in the dust.
Data for this article was collected from spoda.ai, the world's first cricket intelligence tool that uses data and makes cricket analytics simple and offers you an all-in-one cricket analytics solution.
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