Dubai: Overwhelming favourites will be an understatement to define the Suryakumar Yadav-led India given the gulf between them and the seven other nations, including a mercurial Pakistan, when the battle for continental supremacy unfolds at the Asia Cup T20 tournament on Tuesday.
The action will begin with Afghanistan taking on Hong Kong in Abu Dhabi, but all eyes will be on Dubai, where a star-studded Indian team will be aiming to crush United Arab Emirates in its opener on Wednesday.
In a tournament that has often served as a dress rehearsal for the T20 World Cup, the Asia Cup this time comes with a sense of inevitability.
The weight of expectations is on the Indian team, not merely because of its pedigree but also because the balance of power has tilted decisively in its favour.
India, for all their internal debates and external expectations, look like the one side that has clarity of purpose. And clarity, in high-pressure tournaments, often counts for more than raw talent.
If one takes into account leadership, and sheer depth of talent, then this is India’s tournament to lose.
Such has been the confidence that chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir didn’t for once entertain the idea of picking a 17-member squad allowed by the Asian Cricket Council.
Instead, they picked 15 like they do for ICC events even if it meant keeping out players like Shreyas Iyer and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Winning the continental showpiece for the ninth time (seven in ODI format and one in T20 format in 2016) would neither earn Suryakumar or head coach Gautam Gambhir any extra credit.
But anything short of trophy would invite a deluge of criticism given that the T20 World Cup is set to be co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka in four and half months’ time.
Suryakumar and his colleagues have around 20 games (if they reach Asia Cup final) before the global event starts. Getting the core combination right would be a major goal for the side.
India is such a powerhouse that at this point BCCI has the ability to field three national T20 teams of equal strength.
Suryakumar has been a phenomenal skipper so far with an astounding 80 per cent win record but now the leadership group will have vice-captain Shubman Gill, who is expected to take charge from the Mumbaikar in due course of time.
How the T20 skipper and Test skipper align and sing from the same hymn sheet will certainly be watched with a lot of interest.
The manner in which Indian batters reinvented the grammar of T20 batting, largely due to IPL exposure, has been difficult to match for teams like Pakistan and Sri Lanka, who were on even keel till a decade and half back.
Who can stop India
The broader storyline of the Asia Cup is therefore less about who can win it and more about who can stop India.
Their depth dwarfs Pakistan’s transitional experiment and Sri Lanka’s rebuilt side. Salman Ali Agha’s Pakistan team bears a young and fresh look.
The dropping of Babar Azam and Muhammad Rizwan is PCB’s clearest admission yet that reputations cannot hold a team hostage. But their success will largely depend more on how Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf, and Hasan Ali bowl against a flamboyant Indian batting line-up.
Pakistan would feel confident that they hammered Afghanistan by 75 runs in a low-scoring final of a tri-nation where their spinners dominated on a slow Sharjah track.
Sri Lanka, under Charith Asalanka, aren’t bad either but whether they have the consistency to win six to seven games in a tournament is a big question. Bangladesh, who remain mercurial in the shortest format, lack the firepower to sustain a challenge across the full length of the tournament.
To be fair, in group B, Bangladesh look like the second team that will be eliminated apart from Hong Kong.
That leaves Afghanistan as the only realistic stumbling block, a team whose spinners led by the peerless Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmed and the new kid on the block, A Ghazanfar, are expected to choke oppositions during the middle overs. Add to that, a batting order that can punch harder than ever before.
The ‘Minnows’
As Oman deputy head coach Sulakshan Kulkarni put it during an interview with PTI, there is bound to be nervousness but the associate nations would look at games against India and Pakistan as an opportunity where a bigger audience can watch them ply their trade.
As far as the Indian team is concerned, in their group, their will be 12 NRIs pitted against them — six from UAE and another six from Oman.
For UAE, Oman and Hong Kong , this is a tournament of reckoning and to showcase how far they have come in the past few years with improved infrastructure and better quality of expats from India and Pakistan representing them.
Bowling to a Suryakumar or facing a Jasprit Bumrah is a rare experience for these teams.
For now, the Asia Cup T20 carries one truth that towers above the rest: it is India’s tournament to lose.
