India, March 21 -- The last nine months saw Indian cricket's trophy cabinet enriched with two world titles. The team showed versatility and depth by winning the ODI Champions Trophy on sluggish pitches in Dubai earlier this month, and prevailed on surfaces of uneven bounce in USA and slow tracks in the West Indies to lift the 2024 T20 World Cup.

But a renaissance of sorts on the batting front came in the less glorified bilateral T20Is on true batting pitches. Where India were hitherto reluctant to hit top gear, they amassed 283 and 297-run totals in 2024 and scored the most sixes (23) in a calendar year.

The chief architects of this transformation were young left-handers Abhishek Sharma (24), and Tilak Varma (22), and the gifted Sanju S...