Rewind 2023: Team India dominates all formats, only to miss out on ICC trophies yet again

Looking back at the events of 2023 from the cricketing perspective, it wasn’t all too bad a year for the Indian men’s and women’s cricket teams. At least when taking into account their win-loss ratio across multi-nation tournaments and bilateral competitions.

The Indian men’s cricket team have won 42 matches and lost 15 in 61 games across formats this year, the latest of which was the five-wicket defeat in the rain-affected encounter against South Africa in Gqeberha on Tuesday.

The Men in Blue’s win-loss ratio of 2.800 is miles ahead of the other Full Members of the ICC, with South Africa (1.583) and Australia ((1.375) occupying the second and third spots among the Test-playing nations. That is a gap as significant as it can get and is reminiscent of how the West Indian team of the 1970s and 1980s and the Australian side of the late 1990s and 2000s were streets ahead of their rivals.

The Harmanpreet Kaur-led women’s team too has had good numbers this year, winning 11 out of the 19 T20Is that they’ve played so far with a W/L ratio of 1.833. In ODIs, the numbers read: one win, one defeat and one tie, all of which took place in their tour of Bangladesh.

The sample size for the India U-19 team, however, is too small to be taken into account, given they’re currently participating in the Asia Cup in which they’ve played three matches so far and have qualified for the semi-finals.

One could say that 2023 has been a fairly productive year for Indian cricket, statistically speaking that is. What puts a giant question mark on that statement, however, is the fact that India, both men and women, failed to win a single ICC trophy in three attempts.

A decade has passed since MS Dhoni masterminded India’s triumph in the 2013 Champions Trophy in England and the men’s team remains without an ICC title ever since. As for the women’s team, they are yet to win an ICC event; the closest they’ve come to winning silverware in global tournaments is their runner-up finishes in the 2005 and 2017 ICC ODI World Cups and the 2020 T20 World Cup.

Looking back at the events of the year that has nearly come to an end, we take a look at the highs, the lows and the top performers for the men’s and women’s cricket teams:

The Good: Consistent performance across formats, Asian success

The aforementioned win/loss ratio is the result of the consistency exhibited by the men’s and women’s cricket teams across a variety of competitions and even in the ICC events themselves — until tripping and falling over in the matches that mattered the most that is.

India men began the year by hosting Sri Lanka and New Zealand at home, registering identical 3-0 and 2-1 series victories in the ODI and T20I legs respectively. More recently, they defeated Australia 2-1 and 4-1 in an ODI and T20I series respectively that took place on either side of the ICC World Cup. They also won the T20I series in Ireland 2-0 with a second-string side led by a returning Jasprit Bumrah.

Their 1-2 series defeat against Australia in an ODI series right before the IPL along with a 2-3 series loss against West Indies in an away T20I series were minor blips in their otherwise impeccable bilateral record this year.

India played a handful of Tests this year, beating Australia 2-1 to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after winning the first two Tests in Nagpur and Delhi, and would have completed a sweep of the two-Test series in the West Indies had rain not saved the hosts in Port of Spain.

The women’s team began the year with a T20I triangular series in South Africa also involving West Indies, where they remained undefeated until suffering a five-wicket defeat against the Proteas in the final. They would tour Bangladesh later that year, where they took the T20I series 2-1 but shared the honours 1-1 in the one-day leg that saw tempers flare in the tied decider.

The standout achievement for both the men’s and women’s teams, however, would be winning gold on debut in the Hangzhou Asian Games. India fielded a full-strength side led by Harmanpreet for the women’s event, in which they routed Bangladesh in the semis after bowling them out for 51 before triumphing over Sri Lanka in the final by 19 runs.

A historic selfie with the #TeamIndia | #AsianGames | #IndiaAtAG22 pic.twitter.com/zLQkMRD36W

— BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) September 25, 2023

The men’s team, however, consisted of fringe players led by wicketkeeper-batter Ruturaj Gaikwad. They too hammered Bangladesh in the semis before being awarded the gold medal after the final against Afghanistan ended in a washout.

The men’s team, under Rohit’s leadership, also triumphed in the Asia Cup that was jointly hosted by Pakistan and Sri Lanka in August and September. The Men in Blue hammered Pakistan by 228 runs in the Super Four stage before bowling Sri Lanka out for 50 in the final and chasing the target down in just 6.1 overs to win their eighth title overall and seventh in the 50-over format.

The Bad: Stumbling in the final hurdle of ICC events

The consistent run across formats, however, could not translate to an ICC title for another year running. India had suffered a semi-final defeat in the Men’s T20 World Cup and failed to qualify for the knockouts in the Women’s ODI World Cup last year.

This year, they managed to feature in the knockouts in all three events — the Women’s T20 World Cup and Men’s ODI World Cup, besides the Men’s World Test Championship final. As has been the case with the Indian team at the senior level, the big-match nerves ended up getting the better of them on each occasion.

Harmanpreet and Co began the T20 World Cup campaign with clinical chases against Pakistan and West Indies and recovered from an 11-run loss against England with a victory against Ireland to seal their place in the semi-finals. In the semis, however, they ended up suffering a five-run loss against the mighty Australians, falling narrowly short after a superb turnaround engineered by skipper Harmanpreet (52) and Jemimah Rodrigues (43), with the former’s run-out seen as the final blow to India’s hopes.

Australia would deny India ICC titles in the men’s game as well, beating them in the WTC Final at the Oval in June as well as in the ICC World Cup final in Ahmedabad on 19 November, with left-handed batter Travis Head playing a significant role on both occasions.

India had finished second in the 2021-23 WTC cycle with a points percentage of 58.8 following their victory in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, but were hardly a match for the Aussies in the final, where Pat Cummins and Co seized a huge 173-run first innings lead that would have been a lot bigger had it not been for Ajinkya Rahane’s fighting 89. India ended up getting bundled out for 234 in their second essay, suffering a 209-run defeat and losing the WTC final for a second consecutive time as a result.

It was even more perplexing in the ODI World Cup, where Rohit and Co won 10 matches in a row — surpassing their nine wins in 2003 for the most matches won by India in a single edition of the World Cup. That included a six-wicket victory against Australia in the tournament opener in Chennai as well as dominant victories over Sri Lanka (302 runs), South Africa (243 runs) as well as a 70-run victory over New Zealand in the semi-final at Wankhede in which they racked up a first-innings total of 397.

Barring Rohit, none of the other batters took the initiative in the final as the Men in Blue could only manage a modest total of 240. Head then dished out a superb 137 off 120 deliveries to help Australia recover from a shaky start and break a billion Indian hearts yet again.

One can only hope the Indian men’s and women’s team end the drought next year in the T20 World Cups that take place in West Indies-USA and Bangladesh respectively. Indian cricket fans will also hope Rohit can start the year 2024 on a solid note by conquering the ‘Final Frontier’ — beating Proteas in a Test series away from home, with the second and final Test against South Africa taking place in Cape Town starting 3 January.