India head coach Gautam Gambhir has said bowlers’ careers are at stake on pitches that give them nothing, after West Indies chased down 250 with nine balls to spare in the second T20I in Ranchi on Friday. Cricinfo noted it was the second time in less than a fortnight that Gambhir has asked for a more even contest between bat and ball in white-ball cricket. The third T20I of the five-match series, level at 1-1, is in Indore on Sunday.

What Gambhir said after Ranchi

The match produced 501 runs and 33 sixes in 38.3 overs, on what Cricinfo described as a flat pitch and dewy conditions at a small ground. Gambhir did not pretend the surface was neutral, but he did not hide behind it either.

“You don’t want a good bat-and-ball competition?” Gambhir asked. “What you want to see, that’s also what we want to see. We also want to see an even contest. These bowlers are our bowlers, not someone else’s bowlers. Their careers are at stake, they have worked hard to sit in this dressing room. If it’s an even competition, we’ll see a better game of cricket.”

In the same press conference he said the defeat would be examined. “You don’t shrug off any defeat,” he said. “These are obviously tough conditions to bowl – we know flat wickets with the dew – obviously it’s tough but we need to figure out and find the way.” On the result itself he was blunt: “The bottom line is we couldn’t defend 250. They batted extremely well. They deserved to win.”

He also defended the decision to send Shivam Dube in at No. 4 ahead of Shreyas Iyer. India scored only 39 runs between overs 12 and 16, a passage that coincided with the promotion. Dube made seven off 10 balls, the Times of India reported. “I’ve said in T20 cricket only the openers are fixed,” Gambhir said.

Brilliant knocks from Shai Hope and Sherfane Rutherford guide West Indies home in the 2nd T20I in Ranchi.

We move to Indore for the 3rd T20I.

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The numbers behind the complaint

India made 249 for 5, their highest T20I total against West Indies, and it was not enough. West Indies replied with 252 for 4 in 18.3 overs. Our match report on Shai Hope’s hundred has the full chase. Cricinfo’s stats package puts it in context:

• 501 runs in the match is the second-highest aggregate in a T20I. The highest is 517, from South Africa v West Indies at Centurion three years ago.
• The 250 chase is the second-highest successful chase in T20Is, behind South Africa’s 259 against West Indies at Centurion in 2023.
• Hope’s unbeaten 102 came off 45 balls. He is the only wicketkeeper-captain with a T20I hundred, and he now has two.
• Hope and Sherfane Rutherford added 120 for the fourth wicket, West Indies’ highest fourth-wicket stand in men’s T20Is. Cricinfo’s forecaster gave West Indies a 6.08% win probability when it began.
• India’s left-arm spinners conceded 116 runs in 7.3 overs, an economy rate of 15.46, the second-worst by any team in a men’s T20I (minimum five overs).
• India have scored 250 or more seven times in T20Is and missed an eighth by one run.

Hope’s last four scores on this tour read 104, 162*, 52 and 102*, Cricinfo noted. Captain Shreyas Iyer made 40 off 18 balls in Ranchi after his 42-ball hundred in the series opener. India’s batting was not the problem.

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Guwahati set the tone on September 30

Gambhir made the same argument after the second ODI in Guwahati, where India chased 406 with 39 balls to spare. Shubman Gill’s unbeaten 223 was the highest individual score in an ODI run chase, and 811 runs were scored in 93.3 overs, the third-highest match aggregate in ODI history, according to Cricinfo’s stats roundup. Five batters made hundreds.

India had just won, and Gambhir still spoke up. “I feel I think there has to be a bit of more contest between bat and ball, because I think you talk about cricket – but this is not cricket, this is only batting,” he told Star Sports, as Cricinfo reported. “Obviously, for the records it’s outstanding, for the crowd it’s outstanding, for the broadcaster it’s outstanding, but if you ask me as a genuine cricket fan and as a coach, because I have to have sympathy for the bowlers as well.”

His practical point was about development. He said India gave a debut to Auqib Nabi in that game and wanted to keep exposing bowlers like Gurnoor Brar to hard situations. “The more we expose them at such times, the better it is for Indian cricket,” he said. He also asked for patience with analyses: “If you get too hard just looking at their analysis, then we will never be able to develop bowlers.”

So the Ranchi comments are a repeat, not a reaction. The coach has now said it twice in nine days, once after a win and once after a loss.

What the bowlers did in Ranchi

India’s bowling was not uniformly bad. Mayank Yadav took 3 for 36 in three overs, bowling regularly around 145 kph and reaching 149.5 kph with the delivery that sent Rovman Powell’s off stump cartwheeling. He removed Kamil Pooran and Shimron Hetmyer with successive balls in the first over, and West Indies were 5 for 2, then 58 for 3 in the sixth over.

Gambhir liked that Mayank stopped trying to be clever. “He is a fast bowler, he should bowl like a fast bowler,” he said. “If you can bowl 150kph, bowl at 150kph.” Cricinfo noted that in the first T20I in Lucknow Mayank had used the occasional change of pace instead.

What. A. Delivery \|/

Express pace from Mayank Yadav 🚄

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The best bowling figures of the night belonged to the other side. Roston Chase took 3 for 24 in four overs, and Gambhir singled him out. “The way he altered his lines was very important because, on this wicket, changing your line matters a lot,” he said. “On a wicket like this, that variation is extremely important.”

Sunil Gavaskar questioned India’s choices. He told JioStar he would have given the 17th over to Arshdeep Singh or Mayank rather than Kuldeep Yadav, who went for 24 in it, with three sixes, a boundary and a wide, PTI reported. Mayank still had an over left at that point.

Yuzvendra Chahal took the side of the bowlers. “On such wickets, there’s nothing for the bowlers,” he said. “So, either you have to have something for the bowlers in the wicket, or else just install a bowling machine.” Chahal pointed to the Impact Player rule in the IPL as part of the same problem.

Indore will not make it easier

The teams have one day between games. Holkar Stadium in Indore has small boundaries, and Cricinfo’s Sidharth Monga described it as a venue where the last three ODIs produced scores of 399, 385 and 337. There has been no T20 cricket there for two years. Monga also pointed out that all five matches on this tour, three ODIs and two T20Is, have been won by the side chasing.

There is one counterweight in the Indore record. According to Cricinfo’s match preview, scores of 200 or more have been successfully defended in all four matches in which that mark was reached there. Monga added that the winning sides there have done it by burying the opposition under a mountain of runs.

India Today’s preview says the toss is at 6:30 pm IST, that dew could matter later in the evening, and that Arshdeep has conceded 79 runs for one wicket across the first two games. Cricinfo expects India to keep three specialist bowlers, with Nitish Kumar Reddy a possible replacement for Dube.

What it means for India’s selection

Gambhir has repeatedly said the team needs to try combinations now. In Guwahati he said that after the West Indies ODI series India have “barely 20 ODIs” before the 2027 World Cup. For T20Is the picture is shorter. The five-match series against West Indies is followed by a tour of New Zealand from October 22, where Bhuvneshwar Kumar is in the squad after a gap of nearly four years.

Three T20Is remain before then, in Indore, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Mayank’s pace gave Gambhir something to work with in Ranchi. The spinners’ numbers were the weakest part of the night, with Kuldeep’s four overs costing 53 and India’s left-armers going at 15.46 an over. More analysis is on our India cricket page, including the Samson and Sooryavanshi selection question that Samson’s 82 off 41 balls answered, for now.

The fourth T20I is in Hyderabad on Wednesday, October 14, and the fifth in Bengaluru on October 17.

Sources: Cricinfo, Times of India, Daily Pioneer (PTI), India Today. Profile: Gautam Gambhir on Wikipedia.

Photo: vijay chennupati / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0