Can India win the World T20 cricket tournament?

India is hosting the T20 World Cup from 8 March to 3 April

The question is a short one: Can India win the World Twenty20?

The answer is even shorter: Yes.

But such are the vagaries of the format that you can change the name of the team to Pakistan, England, South Africa, Australia, and the answer would remain the same.

It is no coincidence that the first five editions of the tournament produced five different winners.

The shorter the game, the greater the chances of it becoming a lottery.

It would be wonderful to see Bangladesh, one of the most passionate cricketing nations on earth, win this tournament.

Can Dhoni lead India to win?

The hurdle for lower-ranked teams is not that they cannot beat the top ones. It is that they will struggle to do so consistently.

Bangladesh, for example, can qualify from Group A, but then in the Super 10 stage they will be in a group with Australia, India, New Zealand and Pakistan.

They will have to win two matches and hope for results favourable to them from the others, as two teams progress to the semi-finals.

The other eight teams have all either won or been in the finals of ICC world events. That kind of experience cannot be easily countered.

'It would be wonderful to see Bangladesh win this tournament'

India are best qualified to win in India, although that line of argument didn't get them anywhere in 1987 or 1996 when the 50-over World Cup was played there. The pressure of playing at home got to them each time. The jinx was finally broken in 2011.

If India are to win the World T20, they will have to break another jinx. No host country has ever won the title.

Still, India go into the tournament overwhelming favourites. They are the International Cricket Council's number one team, and have no discernible weaknesses.

The team is well balanced. Their one worry, Yuvraj Singh in the middle order, has been given the time and space to play himself back into form.

Spinners Ravindra Jadeja (left) and R Ashwin will be India's main bowlers

Perhaps Shikhar Dhawan at the top of the order needs to find his touch. But that is being greedy, since his partner Rohit Sharma has been batting like a dream, topped only by the command and authority that Virat Kohli has brought to the crease.

Kohli showed in his innings of 49 against Pakistan in the Asia Cup - as India were chasing 84 - that he has plugged some of the technical shortcomings so ruthlessly exposed by bowlers in England.

He also keeps demonstrating that runs can be made in the format while playing an orthodox game without succumbing to desperate hitting or ugly, everything-goes batsmanship.

That India could do without Manish Pandey, brilliant fielder and maker of a one-day international century in Australia, is testimony to the depth in their batting, where apart from Kohli, Suresh Raina is in the top five in the world.

With the discovery of Jasprit Bumrah and the rediscovery of Ashish Nehra, the bowling looks capable of taking early wickets as well as restricting runs.

Yuvraj Singh has been given the time and space to play himself back into form

Bumrah has learnt the art of bowling the telling yorker from the master himself, Sri Lanka's Lasith Malinga who is a team-mate at Mumbai Indians in the IPL, and has emerged more confident and aggressive.

There is also Mohammed Shami, out of action for a while, and India's best in this format.

Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni will have the problem of too much choice, which is the best kind of headache to have.

The search for a medium-pacer who can bat yielded Hardik Pandya, and surely that is a bonus.

India's main bowlers will continue to be the spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.

There is a balance in the team which makes it superior to the one which won the inaugural World T20 in 2007.

India were the least fancied to win then, as much for their public criticism of the format as for their dismissive attitude towards it.

But it was a win which changed the face of modern cricket, giving birth to the Indian Premier League (IPL) and other leagues across the world, money undreamt of even a generation ago, and bringing to the format a respectability that only millions of dollars can.

In 2011, the Indian team went into the World Cup saying they wanted to "win it for Sachin". That was clearly going to be Sachin Tendulkar's final World Cup.

If players feel they should win it for Dhoni this time, it wouldn't be out of place.

Suresh Menon is Editor, Wisden India Almanack, and Contributing Editor, The Hindu