‘Gamball’ 101: Fearsome flexibility is the defining feature of India’s world champions

India have just lost their second wicket in a World Cup semi-final at the Wankhede Stadium. They are 117-2 in the 10th over, but this is a flat wicket, the boundaries are short, dew is common here, and England can both score quickly and bat deep. To combat it all, India’s only bet is to put as many runs on the board as possible.

The threat of Adil Rashid looms amidst all that. In seven knockout games at the T20 World Cup until then, Rashid has gone for a mere 6.75 in the middle overs. He has not conceded 25 in any of the last three of these. He bosses the middle overs. And amidst the carnage here, he has 1-11 from nine balls. If India are to win, they have to take down Rashid.

At this point, Shivam Dube walks out amidst murmurs in the media centre. It is only the eighth time in 63 games that he is batting in the top four. Suryakumar Yadav promoting a left-hander above himself makes sense, but why Dube and not Tilak Varma, who was batting No.3 until Sanju Samson’s inclusion forced himself to drop down the order?

In the World Cup, Rashid has gone for 9.38 an over against sweeps (conventional, reverse, slog, paddle). With other shots, that number read 7.45. However, these shots have also resulted in wickets (one every eight balls instead of the usual 18). Indians do not naturally sweep, but with wickets in hand, they have to. And Dube, with a reputation of spin-hitting and an extremely long reach, is the best bet.

Dube attempts a slog sweep off the first ball he faces and gets a single. He slog-sweeps a six in Rashid’s next over. And again in Rashid’s fourth. And when he runs a single, Surya does the same before losing his wicket to another. From 2-0-13-1, Rashid finishes with 4-0-41-2 – the first time he goes over 40 in a T20 World Cup knockout match.

Does Dube nail the No.4 slot? Not quite. In the final, India lose their second, third, and fourth wickets in the 16th over. By then, Mitchell Santner is done, and Glenn Phillips does not seem likely to bowl again. So out come Hardik Pandya, Surya, Tilak in that order: Dube bats in his usual position and blasts Jimmy Neesham in the last over.

“Batting orders are very overrated”

“I think the batting orders are very overrated,” Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir said in an interview in November 2025, raising some eyebrows. “Two openers are permanent, rest I think everything shuffles because it’s not the amount of runs that matter in T20I cricket, it’s the impact that matters.” He added that the fluid batting order “has been the ideology from day one when I took over as the head coach.”

Gambhir’s belief in the fluidity of the batting order predates his stint as head coach or his stints as mentor for two IPL franchises. Back in 2019, India had a string of batters who did not bowl, bowlers who did not bat, and Pandya: Gambhir suggested using R Ashwin or Ravindra Jadeja at No.4 and also as the sixth bowler. Too radical back then, perhaps.

That Gambhir would walk the talk was probably expected by a decision as Kolkata Knight Riders captain. Melbourne Renegades might have started it, but it was during his stint as KKR captain that Sunil Narine’s role as an opening batter caught on. When he became the Indian head coach, there was indeed no fixed position for anyone other than the openers.

Indian batters by batting position in men’s T20Is during Gautam Gambhir’s stint

India initially backed Samson and Abhishek. After trying out Gill (it is not very clear why), they discarded the idea and returned to Samson via Kishan, keeping Abhishek a constant. One can see why. Samson, Abhishek, and in his short stint, Kishan, were magnificent inside the powerplay: they finished the World Cup as India’s top three. Samson’s brief foray down the order was far from productive.

Surya, excellent at No.3, gave up that position to accommodate Tilak. Both men had superb, sustained runs, but Kishan was quicker than both. Tilak’s early struggles against spin are probably evident from his run at No.4.

The shuffles are even more evident from No.5. It may seem Pandya was the chosen one there, but he batted there only 15 times in 32 innings. India have indeed been flexible with their batting order.

At times it seemed unusual. Against Bangladesh in last year’s Asia Cup, Gill fell immediately after the powerplay, and Dube joined Abhishek – for Bangladesh’s main spinners turned the ball into the left-hander. It felt cruel when seven Indians batted that night but Samson was not one of them, but you could see the method behind it.

In a top eight dominated by left-handers, Pandya often walked in at five if Surya got out, as he did twice against England in 2025, and in consecutive games against South Africa in December and against New Zealand in January. But when Kishan was the third wicket to fall in the same New Zealand series, Dube joined Surya.

Does T20 need a batting order?

One may, of course, attribute India’s success to having more explosive batters than anyone else, and claim that batting-order reshuffling has little to do with it.

But does T20 really need a batting order the way the longer formats do? In Test cricket, the batting side has one resource – wickets. Thus, every batter walks out after a specific number of wickets fall.

They usually follow the same principle in ODIs, where wickets are important despite there being a second resource (balls). However, if a side has wickets in hand in the final stages of an innings (or when the asking rate mounts), a fast scorer is often promoted.

There is no reason for sides not to do the same in T20, where teams run out of balls more often than they run out of wickets. Barring tradition, there is every reason for teams to determine the entry point of a batter based on balls left and not wickets left.

Matchups, of course, are a different matter altogether. In an era when spinners rarely bowl at the death, there is no reason for a specialist pace-hitter to come out anytime before that. Similarly, if a leg-spinner bothers right-handers, it is only logical to promote left-handers to counter that threat. Of course, the quality of the cricketers involved is relevant, but for two batters of comparable abilities, the batting order needs to be flexible.

Along with high-risk, aggressive batting and a disregard for personal milestones, the fluidity of batting order has been a cornerstone of the Indian success story.