His exclusion from the T20 World Cup squad might end up being the final few lines of his T20I chapter, and another ICC event might feel a step too far, but whichever way Shikhar Dhawan’s career ends, nothing should take away from the legacy he has built as a white-ball giant.
Two months ago, India announced a white-ball only squad for a short tour to Sri Lanka, the same time the Test contingent was in England. It was the first time India was fielding two men’s international squads in separate countries, and the onus of guiding a young brigade to the island nation fell on Shikhar Dhawan, the seniormost Indian player not in Test reckoning, but a vital member of the white-ball setup.
It didn’t seem like a move just based on Dhawan’s decade-long experience though; in the year preceding the promotion, Dhawan had looked like a different T20 player altogether, finding a second wind in the format with two prolific IPL seasons. The image of a scratchy Dhawan, gasping for fluency had become such a regular image in the shortest format, but here was the freewheeling left-hander, just the way he had landed on the international circuit, cracking strokes like a whip left and right. Last October, he became the first batsman to score back-to-back IPL centuries (he had none in 12 seasons before that) and went on to hit two more 80+ scores to average 54.28 in the first half of this year’s edition.
You were almost lulled into believing that India’s third-highest run-getter in T20Is – behind Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli – had found enough gears in him to play his third T20 World Cup, but when the final 15 was announced, Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul became first-choice openers, with Ishan Kishan and Virat Kohli also available to take up the opening spots, if need be.
Dhawan’s stellar run notwithstanding, his omission isn’t hugely surprising though. Irrespective of his IPL stats, Dhawan, on the short Lanka tour, looked largely out-of-sorts, falling back to the same sluggish style that raised questions around him, striking the ball at 108.66 in the three T20Is. With Rohit Sharma a shoo-in, and KL Rahul one of India’s best in the format, even if Dhawan had squeezed in, it would have been difficult to find a space for him.
At 35, Dhawan’s career looks as good as over in T20Is, unless there’s a short-term plan for him in the future. Chetan Sharma, India’s chief selector, rather surprisingly said that they wanted to give Dhawan ‘some rest’, and he’s still ‘an important player’. What’s more important than a T20 World Cup, though?
It’s probably the 50-over World Cup, and it’s likely India still has plans to give him one final go for the 2023 edition. After all, he’s one-third of India’s ODI big three (even if he’s arguably the least fancy of the lot), and carries an exceptional track record at ICC events, standing tall time and again for the big games. At World Cups, his average sits at 53.70, and in Champions Trophy, it’s a whopping 77.88. He’s hit six of his 17 ODI hundreds at those events.
Since the start of 2019, he averages 45 in ODIs, at par with his career average, with 10 fifty-plus scores. In T20Is during the same window, he averages 25.09 in T20Is, with two fifties and a strike rate of 113.33 in 22 games. Those thinning T20I numbers might have dimmed his aura a tad, but it cannot undermine the weight of his mighty contribution to Indian cricket over the last decade.
As an enforcing opening batsman, Dhawan gave India freedom and panache at the top, immediately taking the load off by drilling boundaries during field restrictions. He also had the calibre to steady himself, runs trickling off his bat even in the middle overs, as he stayed long enough to set the platform for the innings with big scores. With Dhawan up top, India had a mixture of assurance and fluidity, an aspect that, very importantly, retained its essence at high-pressure global events. He top-scored for India at the 2013 Champions Trophy, the 2015 World Cup, and the 2017 Champions Trophy, also scoring 117 in one of the only two matches he played at the 2019 World Cup. With this level of consistency, you are all set to be branded a demi-god in India. Unfortunately for Dhawan, his numbers in the other two formats never let him enjoy that status.
His Test career is all but over, and there’s little to look forward to as far as T20Is are concerned too. This decade is jam-packed with ICC events, but Dhawan is likely to not be a part of most of those. As their big-match talisman fades away, India will look to groom the Shaws, the Gills, and the Padikkals, and there’s no dearth of them. It’s unlikely though, that they will ever get someone like Dhawan, who’s as nonchalant as he’s dependable.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s still enough fuel in him to carry him to the home World Cup in 2023, but for that, he’ll have to keep the young ones at bay for two more years. Whether he manages to stick around for that long remains to be seen, but when he finally calls it a day, Dhawan deserves all the praise and more.
