India’s Champions Trophy victory has been a complete team effort in which everyone has stepped up at different points to make vital contributions.
While the big hundreds from Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill, or the five-wicket hauls of Mohammed Shami and Varun Chakaravarthy will be discussed in the coming days, there have been quite a few unsung heroes.
K.L. Rahul and Shreyas Iyer were two such players whose consistent performances made some nervy chases look much more straightforward than they were.
Rahul moved down to number six to accommodate a left-hander in Axar Patel at his favoured old spot and have a left-right mix in the lineup. It meant he had to reinvent his game, often needing to be aggressive immediately and put the pressure back on the bowlers.
“Cricket is a team game, and whatever the team requires of you, you must be able to do it. You need to be able to accept that and find a way to put in performances for the team and understand what your roles and responsibilities are,” said Rahul, who scored a vital unbeaten 34 in the final. More impressively, the 32-year-old stayed till the end while chasing and got the job done on three occasions during the tournament.
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“It requires a lot of preparation and work outside the cricket field, just sitting and thinking about how I need to take each game and how I need to perform in different situations. I watched some of the players that I liked and saw how successful they had been. I am happy that I’ve been given different tools and I have been able to perform,” he added.
Similarly, Shreyas reinforced his credentials as one of the best number-four batters in the world, topping the run charts for the Men in Blue with 243 runs. Skipper Rohit Sharma even labelled the Mumbai batter a ‘silent hero.’
“Throughout the tournament he was brilliant and important to us in that middle phase. He stitched partnerships with all the batters who were batting with him. With Virat, in the semifinal against Australia and also against Pakistan. Even today, to be honest, when I got out, we had lost three wickets. And at that time, we needed a partnership of 50 to 70 runs, which (Axar) and Shreyas did,” said Rohit.