SILVER-WHERE?

After the heartbreak at the World Test Championship final, and with the ODI World Cup at home looming large, a look at where the Indian team stands now

- ANIRUDH MADHAVAN

THE ‘SHINY LOLLIPOP’ was for years the top prize in Test cricket. Since 2003, to be precise. But only when the ICC repackaged it as the World Test Championship did the mace start to evade India. Virat Kohli’s men held the mace for three years—2017-19—before losing it to New Zealand in the inaugural final at Southampton in 2021.

Yet, there is something about a trophy or a medal that gives a sense of finality to the sporting brain. Which is why, when India—this time Rohit Sharma’s men—lost the second final to Australia at the Oval, there were calls to overhaul the system. Overreactions, yes. Fair? Perhaps. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, to put it mildly, controls more geography than its name suggests. It runs the richest and the best T20 league in the world, is more prolific in money-making than Sachin Tendulkar was with runs, and is projected to corner 38.5 per cent of the International Cricket Council’s net surplus earnings for the next four years. England and Australia, part of the supposed “big three”, get around 7 per cent and 6 per cent each.

So, an Indian fan has every right to ask for that trophy, across all three formats; it was, after all, the fan that made this behemoth. The last piece of silverware India lifted was almost exactly a decade ago—the 2013 Champions Trophy in England. Under Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Since then, it has been a parade of possibilities— multiple semifinals and finals, but never the big one.