India aren't the perfect T20I team, but they might be the greatest ever

If it hadn't actually happened, you would struggle to imagine the kind of dominance India have displayed in T20Is. It is a fickle, high-variance format. The shorter the duration of the game, the smaller the gap in quality between opponents. India have won 43 of their 53 completed T20Is since the start of 2023. This includes an unbeaten T20 World Cup campaign during which they went from the seam-bowling paradise of New York to the flatties in the Caribbean Islands to spin-friendly Guyana and back to high-scoring Barbados, getting the better of eight different teams.

Take out the first half of this unimaginable run, and we are talking of stuff beyond fantasies. Since the start of 2024, India have won 28 and lost three. Surely there should be some mean reversion around the corner? Surely India have enjoyed too much luck? Surely this run should be unsustainable?

And they are missing at least two of their first XI players. Two players who are the kind of point-of-difference bowlers franchises break the bank for. It is scary to think how good India can get if you add Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav to the line-up that just beat a full-strength England 4-1. We finally have in front of our eyes a team worthy of representing a country that runs the best non-international T20 tournament. A country with hitting talent that was just waiting to be unleashed on the world should their national team dare to shed muscle-memory conservatism.