India defeated Oman by 21 runs in their third and final group match of the Asia Cup 2025, but many cricket experts were not bit pleased with the defending champions’ approach, saying the fixture should have been taken more seriously.

Chasing 189 to win, Oman managed to reach 167/4 in 20 overs, nearly on the verge of causing an upset as India looked scratchy across all departments.

Speaking to Cricbuzz, veteran commentator Harsha Bhogle said the Men in Blue got a “stern reminder” from Oman that if they just turn up for the game, then this is the kind of result they will get. 

To everyone’s attention, India skipper Suryakumar Yadav demoted himself to No. 11 in the batting order to give others some game time.

“I think from time to time, life and the game reminds you that if you just turn up, if you take the opposition lightly, you get a reminder on your backside. I think this was a stern reminder to India. You could see that in the bowling. It was very disappointing the bowling. But they just turned up you could see that and it’s a reminder that if you do this, this is what will happen. Oman fell short by 21 runs in a relatively large chase is in the context of this tournament,” Bhogle said.

“So, sometimes it’s good to get that reminder again in life because if you just turn up then you must not win well, if you just turn up and you win it creates bad habits. So it’s good that India got a little bit of a scare. I hope they think it was a scare but if they look back at the bench strength, it didn’t look very good,” he added.

Former Indian cricketer Rohan Gavaskar endorsed Bhogle’s views, particularly of the bench players, who were included in the playing XI ahead of the Oman game.

India made two changes to their playing XI. Pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah and world No. 1 T20I bowler Varun Chakaravarthy didn’t play, and they were replaced by Harshit Rana and Arshdeep Singh.

“When you’re a bench player not a certainty in 11 when you come up against a team like Oman you’ve got to be picking up wickets and be saying ’listen, you know what? I don’t care what the others are doing. I’m playing for more matches in not just in this tournament but in the future’ and if you look average against Oman or you don’t look threatening there are many a games where you’ll bowl really well and not pick up wickets, edges might go for four and the selectors will see and say ‘okay he bowled well, he’s been a little expensive but you know fine he has bowled well.’ But if you don’t look threatening, you don’t look wicket-taking then that’s a problem. You can play in second gear. We’ve played this game in second gear whether it’s the batting whether it’s the bowling you’ve seen like Tilak Varma bowled, Abhishek Sharma bowled,” Gavaskar told Cricbuzz.

“So it clearly shows that they didn’t take the game seriously. Yeah, the batting order was such that Suryakumar Yadav didn’t bat. So they’ve not taken the game seriously. The bowling also hasn’t taken but the main bowlers not Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma, are the ones will be thinking you know what these Omani batters were 20 short of what would have been a historical victory for them,” he remarked.

Team India will now open their Super 4 campaign against arch-rivals Pakistan on Sunday (September 21) in Dubai.