T20 World Cup: Test of India's new template

Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri looked to bring in their own brand of daredevilry to the format. While Dhoni’s tactic was always about stretching the game as far as possible and stifling the opposition in a pressure-cooker situation, Kohli preferred an in-yourface attacking approach from Ball 1. During his partnership with Shastri, we saw the influx of specialists — be it out-and-out pace or wrist spin. It worked for a while but went bust in UAE last year as India failed to go beyond the group stage, which prompted a regime change.

Read AlsoBeen a while since we won World Cup, need to do lot of things right to make that happen: Rohit Sharma

India last won a World Cup 11 years ago and skipper Rohit Sharma knows his team will have to do a lot of things right to lift the coveted trophy in Australia. Their last ICC trophy came back in 2013 when they won the Champions Trophy. "One step at a time for us and focus on each team we are going to

The coach-captain duo of Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma took charge and they had one full year to forge a fresh template to bring back the T20 World Cup which India won in 2007. Dravid has been quietly authoritative and Rohit has played along. One understands that Dravid, with an academic bent of mind, loves to deal with data and looks to infer from those while Rohit’s chilled-out approach gives a lot of confidence to the new players who are looking to find a footing. In a game against West Indies sometime back, Rohit had the option of bowling tried and tested Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the last over against a faltering opposition, but he gave the ball to Avesh Khan just to see whether the paceman was up for the challenge. Avesh couldn’t keep the runs down. Rohit didn’t mind the defeat, as long as