Split teams, captaincy and coaches too — give Dhoni a bigger role

What we need in the backroom are not cricket people who understand statistics, but statisticians who know cricket

It is time India began to take T20 cricket seriously. That might be a strange thing to say about a country that won the inaugural World Cup in 2007 and changed the face of the sport the following year with the IPL which remains the top tournament in the T20 world.

But things change quickly in T20, and I don’t mean just in the course of a match or an innings. What was important yesterday — Test match experience, for instance — often turns out to be a handicap. What works for one team need not work for another.

Since it is a new format, less than two decades old, almost every match, every change, every nuance is recorded. Patterns can be discerned. Changes can sometimes be anticipated.