AHMEDABAD: February 18, 1991. The cover of Sports Illustrated magazine features five members of the US basketball team. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing. Scrawled on the top of the magazine were two words. Dream Team. This instantly creates a buzz for the upcoming Olympics in Barcelona. At those Games, the US team wiped the floor, demolished the competition before wearing the gold medal around their necks like they owned the damn arena.
It's 31 years removed from Barcelona but the 'Dream Team' still has a halo. Reverence. All other great sporting teams, whether they like it or not, are inevitably compared to what Jordan, Johnson & Co. did in Spain. They had a flawless 8-0 record at the Olympics. But it wasn't just their winning record that gave them a sense of invincibility. They won those matches with an average of 43.8 points per game. They opened the campaign with a blowout 116-48 performance over Angola, a 68-point margin.
The closest encounter they had was the gold medal match. The scoreboard read USA 117-85 Croatia. A 32-point margin. They were so good matches were over as long as their bus turned up at the Stadium on time. A Sports Illustrated story from the Olympics said that the toughest game they had was a scrimmage (practice session) before the tournament began. Their conquest was such that it inspired reporters to write books. Publications went crazy as people who had no interest in the sport lapped up literature surrounding it. The hold of the team was most recently visible in 'The Last Dance', Netflix's retelling of Chicago Bulls in the 80s and 90s via Jordan's lens. They dedicated an episode to the Dream Team.
Since the first week of October 2023, another side has closely resembled the Dream Team in terms of domination; The Indian cricket team. In 10 venues spanning the length and breadth of this country, they have routinely played the sport like higher beings. Cricket in excelsis. It's not meant to be this easy. In a few games, they have had too much time that batters weren't averse to playing out deliveries to enable Virat Kohli to get to a 100.
What about pressure and the weight of expectations? There's bound to be some jeopardy somewhere? Try telling that to the team, though. The only adversity they have faced so far is when Hardik Pandya, their lead all-rounder, suffered an injury mid-game against New Zealand. But, Pandya's injury has acted like a blessing in disguise because it has unlocked Mohammed Shami, an MVP contender.
Take a look at the margin of victory (runs) across their last five games, when they set a target. 100, 302, 243, 160 and 70. That 70-run win over the Black Caps in the semifinal is in itself telling about how they have dictated the ebbs and flows in every match. There was a brief window when New Zealand threatened to make a match of it. That's perhaps been the only time in the entire tournament when the hosts have felt a bit uncomfortable. That period lasted for about 10 minutes.
A mild sense of tension evaporated as soon as Shami removed Kane Williamson. Strangely enough, the one thing that has underpinned all their domination is that they haven't needed things to go their way for a long time. All they needed was an inch. The next moment, there is a gap the size of a barn door. A few examples to ram home this point. Australia lost 5/20 inside 10 overs. Pakistan lost 7/36 inside 15 overs. The lower order strung together 46 runs against England. The hallmark of champions.
In sports, there's something called the Goldilocks team. In simple terms, it is one in which everything has to be clockwork for them to be at their optimum best. You could make a case for saying that the Class of 2003 was a Goldilocks unit. This team, though, doesn't need that. Shubman Gill didn't begin the tournament. They lost Pandya midway. They compromised on their batting depth. They replaced an all-rounder with a frontline pacer as cover (at some level, this team can be directly compared to the Australian side that rocked up to the 2007 World Cup).
Rohit, though, wasn't going to get carried away. "I totally believe that whatever calls we make on the field, it is in the best interest of the situation of the team and what is going to happen from here on now, next five overs or ten overs," he had said when talking about the team's winning run earlier in the tournament. "So, you try and analyse that kind of situation and try and make that move... hats off to the players as well to really comply with that, because it's not easy. It's one thing if I keep thinking about it, and another thing if the guys don't comply with it. Full credit to all 10 of them who have taken part in that game and responded to the thought process of the team. It's not my thought process, it's the team's thought process that the guys comply with. When things look good, everything looks good, everything works well."
Even when it doesn't, they unpick the lock like expert pickpockets and carry on. Coach Rahul Dravid spoke about it before the Netherlands match. "We had a balance," he had said. "We structured the whole thing around certain things. But when that hasn't happened, we've had the ability, the skill, and the mental fortitude to be able to bounce back and to be able to still compete and do really well." They are one performance — one win — away from formally being recognised as the 2023 version of the Dream Team.
