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Journalism of Courage
Former England captain Nasser Hussain feels that India are still a massive force in the T20 format even after they lost in the T20 World Cup semifinal against England but he felt that when it comes to the knockout games, the team does not seem to evolve and go back to their “old ways”.
“They are still a massive force. You look at their team on paper and also we talk about the depths in English cricket and you look at the players they could have picked, especially in their batting lineup. There were a couple of blows, you kno with Jasprit Bumrah and Jadeja being injured,” he said.
“When it comes to knockout games, when it’s bilateral games or group stage games, Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid came in saying they would change that. Even when Ravi Shastri was working with us last summer, I did something with Ravi and asked him about this and Ravi, as the coach of the last World Cup, said we (India) played pretty timid cricket with the bat in particular and that’s got to change. And that’s what Rohit and Rahul Dravid came in to change,” he said.
“They did it in bilateral, they did it against England. Suryakumar Yadav smashed it around Trent Bridge, got a brilliant 115 and it looked like ‘that’s it’ but then you have got to take that into a game where if you lose you know you are going to get criticism. And the first time they took that to a knockout game, they slipped back into their old ways of being 66/ 2 in 10 overs,” he added.
“Twitter was going ballistic about how you’d go on about India and not Pakistan. I’s a completely different thing because Pakistan does not have the batting depth as we saw in the last 5 overs in the final. They don’t have the likes of Suryakumar Yadav, they don’t have Hardik Pandya who can come in and smash it and also Pakistan have the best bowling attack. So if they get par as we saw in the final, less than par, they are still in the game. If India get par with England at Adelaide, you are out of the game because of the way England can bat,” he said about the India, Pakistan comparisons.
“There’s talks of younger guns coming through. One thing is for certain. They have the players. It’s not the players, it’s the mindset. They need an Eoin Morgan type character to go in there and say ‘carefree cricket. 20 overs. Go and smash it as much as you can for 20 overs. Play like you play in the IPL and smash it but do it for India and don’t worry about the noise. Really shot out the noise. We’ll back you if you are bowled out for 120,” the former England batter added.
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