Cricket | Smells like team spirit

For fans, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s quiet exit from Test cricket in May 2025 signalled the end of an era. Yet before the year was out, the two were once again scripting victories for India, climbing to the top of the ODI batting rankings. Only the stage grew smaller; the fire remained.To understand how India arrived here, one must return to the years when Kohli’s batting pushed at the edges of possibility first set by first deity Sachin Tendulkar, while Rohit glided through tournaments—peaking at the 2019 World Cup, where he unfurled five immaculate hundreds. But behind the silver linings were some clouds too: the humbling loss to Pakistan in the 2017 Champions Trophy final, and the 2019 WC semi-final where M.S. Dhoni’s run-out felt like a curtain falling—not just on a chase, but on a certainty that had defined a generation. Then, under the long shadow of COVID-19, a battered, stitched-together XI of youngsters—Rishabh Pant, Shubman Gill, Mohammad Siraj et al—was thrust into the 2020–21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Their win, coming on the heels of India’s first-ever Test series victory in Australia in 2018–19, brought the mojo back. The bench, suddenly, was a second frontline.Near-misses persisted: World Test Championship final defeats in 2021 and 2023, and the devastating final loss in the 2023 WC. Yet by late 2023, India briefly sat No. 1 across formats, a reflection of structural change. The IPL had matured into a finishing school, the kind that polished Jasprit Bumrah into a generational force. Even late bloomers like Suryakumar Yadav, whose boundary-edge pirouette in the 2024 T20 World Cup final sealed India’s long-awaited global title, were products of a democratic ecosystem..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;} But its most profound expression came from the women’s game. Smriti Mandhana’s serenity, Harmanpreet Kaur’s defiance, Deepti Sharma’s all-round command and a surge of young talent coalesced into a side that played not with hope but expectation. The culmination came in November 2025, when India lifted the Women’s ODI World Cup—the crowning moment of a decade of Indian cricketing highs.- EndsPublished By: Shyam BalasubramanianPublished On: Jan 3, 2026

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Cricket | Smells like team spirit

Even as icons stepped away, Indian men's cricket revealed a depth that kept wins flowing across formats. But the defining triumph came from its women

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