There is never a good time to lose. Especially when you have been winning as much as India have in T20Is, not losing a series or tournament for three years starting 2023. For them to lose successive series and five matches in a row immediately after becoming the first team to successfully defend a T20 World Cup will come as a rude shock, but this is not the worst time to lose.
Well, actually, for Shreyas Iyer and the selectors, this might be as bad a time as any because it comes immediately after the exclusion of the World-Cup-winning captain and during the exclusion of the player of that tournament. This battle of optics - even though moving on from Suryakumar Yadav and leaving out Sanju Samson are not the reasons India have lost - is for the involved parties to endure, but for the team as a whole there are lessons here with time to spare.
The unbeaten streak had to come to an end at some point. Sixteen consecutive series without a defeat in a format so fickle already defied logic. These reversals have come right at the start of a new cycle with the next World Cup two years away. There is still time to build towards the title defence in Australia.
There is firstly a reminder that India were not the perfect T20 line-up at the back end of their dominant run. There were structural flaws in the side. The conditions at home masked the lean lower middle order, where Tilak Varma batted out of position. There was a heavy reliance on Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya, which has been laid bare in their absence. Varun Chakravarthy was on a decline, which has continued along with fitness issues. In conditions that have had just a little bit of extra bounce and a little less pace, all these issues have been exposed at the same time.
There is a suggestion from the coaching staff that the players are still carrying the hangover of playing on batting beauties for months on end. "I guess we have spoken so much about adaptability, but I think it's got to the point now where you actually have to unpack that suitcase," India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said after the defeat in the fourth T20I in Bristol. "It's easy to say we need to adapt. We need to assess and adapt. I think every coach from under-nine cricket says that about every department of the game. I think it's got to a point now where we actually have to really unpack what that means and understand the process that's needed to be able to make those adaptations, so to speak.
"Psychologically or mentally, I think the challenge to the group has been to accept the fact that we are underachieving in foreign conditions and to throw the gauntlet to the players and say, look, the big prize is two years down the line in Australia. Do we want to be a team that smashes 250 in India and looks great when you hit 80m sixes at Eden Gardens? Or do we want to come to places like this and places like Manchester and places like Southampton where things are slightly different? And again, thinking further down the line, the MCG and those sort of places, do we want to be the team that actually excels in different conditions and do we have the mentality to make those adjustments? And that's the mental challenge and that's [what] we need the players to be able to take on."
This space has maintained that if you took out the irreplaceable Bumrah, Hardik and Axar Patel (Axar may now be replaceable wth Krunal Pandya) from the World Cup squad, there is so much talent in India that you could easily choose another squad to challenge the rest of the first-choice India squad. However, as in the past, the riches all exist in the top order. The IPL doesn't help by taking away the incentive to develop allrounders. Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube, who play as allrounders in the international side, hardly bowl in the IPL because the Impact Player takes away the challenge of balancing a side.
While the team management asks the players to adapt, they need to ask themselves if they are structuring the XI right. Are they pairing batters who complement each other and can't both be shut down by a certain kind of bowling? Are the bowlers' plans spot-on? Is the tactical preparation as spot-on as it used to be under Rahul Dravid and his team management?
The real challenge for this team management starts now in the third year of its term. You can't take away from their wins in both the limited-overs formats in Asia, but the conditions allowed their spin allrounders to be more effective than those in South Africa and Australia will. They have tried to develop Nitish Kumar Reddy as a back-up to Hardik, but regular fitness issues with seam allrounders in India only tell you of the demands on an allrounder's body.
Captaincy and personnel have changed hands, but the team management has been the constant during the end of the dominant home streak in Tests and this now in T20Is.
They will also need to closely monitor how Varun tracks. It is not new that batters have started to step-hit him more than they used to, treating him more as a medium-pacer than a spinner. Injuries haven't helped.
All the while they will also have to work with the top order on adapting to different conditions, and on assessing them and communicating to the rest of the line-up as quickly as possible. And still maintain intent.
The focus is understandably more around the ODI team right now, which shows in Bumrah and Hardik getting rested for bilateral T20Is but not for ODIs. Between now and the 2027 ODI World Cup there is still time where India can look to develop back-ups. Results and expectations will have to be naturalised. A T20 dynasty has come to an end. Can they build another one?