The customary handshakes after the umpires called off the match seemed cold and forced. A drawn series, after rain returned towards the end of India’s truncated innings and spoiled a juicy decider in Bengaluru, would leave Shreyas Iyer and Co discontent. A sense of ruing lurked, when he said: “It could’ve been a different scoreline if we’d bowled well in the second and fourth game.”The last time India failed to win a T20 series was in 2022, when rain rendered the series against South Africa 2-2. Such has been India’s invulnerability at home since then that they annexed eleven series on the rub, a time-frame where they wielded supremacy with successive T20I World Cups triumphs, the first of a dynastic domination in cricket’s most amorphous format.Even a drawn series, thus, could be perceived as a failure. Some empathy is not misplaced. Teams in transition falter. Pitches and conditions abysmally favoured batsmen. Iyer, the captain, is still on probation; India have long shut the doors on its greatest ever show-stealer in this format, Suryakumar Yadav, whose supernatural consistency etched numerous moments of theirs, without Jasprit Bumrah’s inevitable match-defining burst, India’s spin bowling brigade resemble drenched crackers; the balance is reeling in Hardik Pandya’s absence and the inability to groom a suitable heir.Yet, empathy is a sentiment hard to attach with Indian cricket. After all, India is the world’s T20 talent hothouse, exciting and variegated cricketers plucked from the monstrous wingspan of the country and chiselled into high-class cricketers through the toughest league in the world, the IPL. The wealth—of talent, infrastructure and finances — implies that India should remain forever invincible in the format. To be held by a side in utter disarray of every hue, be it wealth, administration or dwindling manpower, would evoke only a harsh judgment.As the series has exposed, the world champions are fallible, beset with talent-deficiency in certain areas and are confused about their bowling philosophy. Envious glances would have already been passed at Sherfaine Rutherford, the middle and late order muscle of the Caribbeans; or a defensive spinner of Roston Chase’s plain efficiency; or the flexibility a phalanx of all-rounders bestowed them with.Most hurting would be how Chase out-bowled India’s spinners (six wickets and economy rate of 9.06). He cut open a two-layered wound of the hosts.A) He sowed doubts on Indian batsmen’s spin game against a lanky off-spinner, who barely breaks the ball but discomfits batsmen with the bounce he generates from a high release point, the dexterity to hit the hard length as well as the yorker bandwidth. B) What is eating India’s spinners, and whether the current crop is the most lethal bunch they have.Story continues below this adThere has been a perceptible strategic shift in the team’s bowling philosophy. The faith in wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav is weaning, which owes as much to the reaffirmed trust in finger-spinners as his insufficient batting in this version. Without Kuldeep, jettisoned after a lone indifferent outing in Ranchi, and the injured mystery spinner Varun Chakaravarthy, the spin cartel has lost its dread and wow factor. Axar Patel looked unusually bland, devoid of his usual thrift and mastery of varying lengths.The results were damning, even putting scrutiny on his spot — four wickets in as many games and an economy rate of 12.21. Fellow finger-arm spinner Naman Dhir’s numbers are not as horrendous, yet not praiseworthy (five wickets and costing 11.40 runs an over). Both sought defensive lines, but found themselves cut to ribbons by West Indies batsmen who largely hung on the back-foot and slugged them to different parts of the ground. Dhir’s cameo (24 off six balls) though offered a sign of encouragement.The series would be remembered as a graveyard for bowlers. But India’s bowlers did not try to salvage themselves either. The dilemma, whether to attack or defend clutched them. In the end, they did not fully commit to either. The pace of the Yadavs, Mayank and Prince, thrilled. Both have rawness of varying degrees, but could be moulded into defining forces for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.But to defend the title, India require broader diversity rather than full-throttle pace. Arshdeep’s middling series (barring the Indore match) could worry them. The new-ball shifts were largely effective, but less so his death-overs facility. It applies to all bowlers, as they turned guileless at the death. The death-over (17 to 20) ledger of infamy reads thus: 62, 50, 36 (in 3.1). Their Ranchi innings lasted only 18.1 overs, the gargantuan chase of 249 sealed without ado.Story continues below this adBefore Dhir’s emergence in the last game, India’s lower order was brittle. Both Shivam Dube and Axar Patel had been non-existent with the bat. Bizarrely, Dube batted only once in the three games he featured. He bowled only three overs as well, casting serious doubts on his future.The fate of Nitish Kumar Reddy, the other seam-bowling all-rounder was no different. He had added pace and seemed a genuine fourth-fifth seamer in the Afghanistan series. But he bowled only five overs in two games. The strategy was baffling, as a seam-bowling all-rounder is indispensable in the Trans-Tasman shores. Kuldeep’s fortunes too are inextricably linked to India unearthing Pandya’s successor so that India could carve a space for a specialist spinner rather than a spin-bowling all-rounder.Maybe, all the plots and ploys would assume significance in the broader picture. But as the rain lashed down in Chinnaswamy, India would have felt some ground of home invincibility beneath their feet slipping away.