Just like last edition, Team India will travel Zimbabwe after winning a T20 World Cup championship. However, the difference is that this Indian side will be hugely under the pump. And they have themselves to blame. After lifting the T20 World Cup 2026, India have been a shadow of themselves. They have changed the captain. Suryakumar Yadav was sacked after the World Cup, with Shreyas Iyer coming in to take the reigns.
However, the transition hasn’t been great. In fact, it has been awful. In this new era, India have been humbled by a secondary team of Ireland. Then, England dismantled India 4-0. It has been a horrible white-ball run under Gautam Gambhir, capping the UK tour with an ODI series loss too.
Now, India have a chance to do some damage control. The next series is up against Zimbabwe and it is not far away as well. India, on paper, should go past Zimbabwe with not much difficulty. After all, the Indian team is still filled with IPL stars. Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Tilak Varma and captain Shreyas Iyer will all play and should ideally dominate Zimbabwe.
But will it really be the case? Zimbabwe have many reasons to surprise India. They recently made a hard task for Bangladesh, beating them in ODIs. They narrowly won the T20Is as well, and that could create trouble for India. It will be easy to be complacent for India but they shouldn’t, as we see some mistakes that India should avoid in the upcoming series.
Don’t drop Vaibhav Sooryavanshi
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi will be the biggest headline of this series. He was in Ireland and England as well, but his first three outings didn’t come as planned. India opted to choose Sanju Samson and Abhishek in Ireland, and rightfully so. The duo won us the T20 World Cup and they had to go with them.
But after Samson looked all at sea initially, India handed the much-awaited debut to Sooryavanshi. Although he made 42 runs before India benched the southpaw again. India dropped him for a nothing game after India had already lost the series. Moreover, it was bewildering that India played Samson in the last match in England despite the fact that he isn’t even in the squad for Zimbabwe.
Now, with no Samson in the team, Sooryavanshi should play all the three games. There’s no point in dropping him after a couple of failures. He will serve the country for the next 20 years, and these are his confidence-building years. There’s Prahbsimran Singh in the team, and he ideally shouldn’t play over Sooryavanshi, who is the most exciting cricketer across the globe at the moment.
The Tilak Varma problem
There’s a massive Tilak Varma problem in the Indian T20I side. He’s the vice-captain in T20Is, yet still no one knows what his ideal batting slot is. Ideally, he should bat higher up the order but there’s no room with Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer. But after this, Tilak has batted unusually well when he plays as a finisher.
Throughout the England series, he batted at No.5 and looked uncomfortable against exactly the type of bowling he was expected to dominate. England repeatedly attacked him with hard lengths and bounce, while spinners tied him down in the middle overs. His numbers against spin this year are awful. In 12 T20I innings, he has scored just 113 runs at a strike rate of 102.7, with nearly 40 per cent dot balls. Those aren’t the returns you expect from a middle-order aggressor.
The irony is that Tilak’s own career numbers already provide the solution. At No.3, he averages 46.35 with a strike rate touching 152. That’s elite production. At No. 6, albeit from a smaller sample, he strikes at over 206 and has already shown he can finish games. Remember his unbeaten 44 off 16 against Zimbabwe and the 21 off seven balls in the T20 World Cup semi-final? That’s a batter playing to his strengths.
The problem is that No.3 already belongs to Ishan Kishan, the former world’s No.1 T20I batter, while captain Iyer is best suited to play at four. That leaves Tilak squeezed into No.5, where his game simply doesn’t flow.
India shouldn’t make a mistake of playing Tilak at five. Instead, have a spin-hitter like Shivam Dube there. Move Tilak into a finishing role where he can attack pace at the death, or persist with him at No.5 and continue watching the innings lose momentum whenever quality spin enters the attack. Another interesting thing is that there’s Rinku Singh in the team as well. You can make a case that if Tilak has to play as a finisher, you might as well play Rinku, who is a designated finisher himself.
Mistake of not adapting to conditions
Don’t look at the Zimbabwe series as a confidence booster. It can be a massive, massive challenge for the Men in Blue. Let’s be honest. The last few weeks have not been kind. Ireland found holes in the batting. England made it worse. And now India land in Harare with the same problems.
Zimbabwe are not the Zimbabwe of 10 years ago. They knocked Australia out of the T20 World Cup and made the Super 8. Since then they’ve beaten everyone in sight at home. Test ODIs, and they already lead the T20I series. Richard Ngarava is captaining well. Courtney Walsh is working with the bowlers. They don’t rely on one guy to win games anymore. They win as a unit.
That’s bad news for India, because Zimbabwe’s bowling hits India right where it hurts. We saw it in England. Short ball, bounce, pace. India lost a dozen wickets to it and averaged barely anything. The batters kept getting cramped, kept popping catches, kept looking rushed.
Now imagine that on Harare pitches. Muzarabani and Ngarava aren’t expressive, but they are tall. They bang it in and the ball climbs. Against Bangladesh, they took 12 wickets between them, doing exactly that. At home Muzarabani is even nastier. And when the seamers are done, the spinners take over. Harare slows up. It turns. It sticks. That’s where guys like Ishan, Tilak, Abhishek and Vaibhav struggled most in England.
Whenever the ball got up at them, they had no room and no answers. India still have the bigger names and deeper batting. But names don’t score runs on foreign pitches. Adaptation does. If India think this will be like an IPL game on a flat track, they’ll get a shock.
India’s T20I squad for Zimbabwe series
Shreyas Iyer (Captain), Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma (Vice-Captain), Ishan Kishan (WK), Shivam Dube, Suryansh Shedge, Rinku Singh, Harsh Dubey, Prince Yadav, Yash Thakur, Ashok Sharma, Mayank Yadav, Prabhsimran Singh (WK), Ravi Bishnoi
Cricket
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