India have embraced batters with a different approach ©Getty
"You are talking about [the game changing in] 2-3 overs. I feel in today's T20 cricket, even 3-4 balls can change the momentum of the entire game." Thus spoke Virat Kohli, captain of India, the oldest winners of the T20 World Cup and among the favourites to lift the trophy again on November 14.
India have been tipped to lift the T20 crown many times post 2007. For with the IPL, which came into being soon after that aforementioned win, they were always sitting on a ridiculous depth of talent. They came closest seven years ago when they lost a final in Dhaka. Then there was a home semi-final loss to the West Indies in Mumbai in 2016, a defeat that punctured a hole in accepted cricketing wisdom. T20 was a different sport, played to a whole different set of tunes and rhythms and not merely a different format of the same white-ball game.
It's important to revisit the events of March 31, 2016 at the Wankhede Stadium to understand where India are five years later. Batting first that night, they made 192. Kohli scored an excellent 47-ball 89*,
