Men in khaki and camouflage manning the highway that connects the 45-km stretch between Bhubaneswar to Cuttack highway; barricades placed at regular intervals; ropes put across all the gullies that connect the highway; a tight security cauldron all around the Barabati Stadium; people across age-groups patiently waiting outside their community gates just to have a look at the stars. You don’t need any promotion to tell an Odia that the Indian team is here.
When the off-line tickets were opened last week, there were chaotic scenes that resembled scenes from the 90s. Out of 40,000 capacity, word around is that only 10,000 were actually put on sale. At the black market, tickets are being sold at 3x rates, with the police already arresting a few.
It is chaos that India have to embrace for the foreseeable future where the T20 format will occupy everyone’s mind till the first half of 2026 that includes a T20 World Cup at home and the Indian Premier League to follow.
Beginning Tuesday, Suryakumar Yadav & Co have 10 T20Is – 5 against South Africa and 5 against New Zealand – to fine tune the combination which will give them the best shot at achieving what no team has done so far – to defend the T20 World Cup. The closest any team has come is till the semi-finals, which tells the challenge ahead of this team. But there are more reasons to be hopeful. After all, this team isn’t in a situation where a group is coming together at the eleventh hour.
Unlike ever before, in the lead up to a World Cup, the positions all seem locked and sealed unless any injury crisis is in store. Ahead of the 2023 World Cup, they had injury concerns over Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul ahead of the 2023 World Cup and even added R Ashwin as a last-minute inclusion. Before the last year’s T20 World Cup, the uncertainty around Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli dragged on till their last bilateral assignment against Afghanistan. This time, the seas are calmer.
“Our 2026 T20 World Cup preparation began right after we won the T20 World Cup in 2024,” Suryakumar said. “For any big tournament, you cannot think that the tournament is here and you have to start preparing. It’s like when we appear for exams in school, it is not like we try to study everything in the last four days. We study for a year or two. Our preparation is similar. The preparation started after the T20 World Cup 2024 got over. Since then, we have been trying new things and everything is working for us,” he added.
Although the road to the World Cup might seem like it is beginning in Cuttack, in reality it has been long coming. Unlike the Test team which is undergoing a transition and the ODI outfit that is caught in middle-ground, in T20s India have a settled team. Having identified the core-group as far back as July 2024, there haven’t been huge changes or any eye-brow raising picks that warrant big scrutiny. The big names might have long left, but this is team that has its own T20 super stars, who will be the talk of the households for the next seven months.
The street vendors at Cuttack clearly know which way the wind is going to blow. And it could well become the trend in the lead up to the World Cup that begins on February 7. While it is a rarity to see any other name other than Kohli, Rohit and even MS Dhoni in the replica Indian team T-shirts with the numbers 18, 45 and 7 displayed font sizes that are hard to miss, the times are clearly changing. This is a different Indian team, which is injected with young blood, who all play a type of T20 cricket that invariably makes you sit on the edge of the seats from the word go.
Key to them all is opener Abhishek Sharma. In a team that has the likes of Bumrah, Suryakumar and Pandya, none defines the characteristic of this fearless team like the boy from Punjab. He is the face of their T20 team and if there are still doubts over it, the message from the vendors is clear with T-shirts with the name “Abhishek and 4” printed on the back placed alongside that of the senior trio. There are ones of the ODI and Test captain Shubman Gill as well, which clearly signals the time has come for India to embrace this new age super stars who are as ambitious when it comes to replicating what the team did in the Caribbean 18 months back.
In the next 10 matches, the team, while covering the length and breadth of India, will face different conditions and situations. The only downside is none of these matches, except for the one against South Africa in Ahmedabad, happens to be at the venues that will host the World Cup fixtures. But that shouldn’t be a hindrance for this side that has won series in Sri Lanka, South Africa and Australia and has looked all the more stronger at home.
Time to put the seat belt on and enjoy the ride.
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