Former Indian pacer Zaheer Khan said that the Indian cricket team didn’t utilize their “trump card” Jasprit Bumrah well against Pakistan, and also mentioned that dew played a factor after the Men in Blue suffered a 10-wicket defeat in the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021.
On Sunday, October 24, in their opening game of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021, Team India didn’t have a good start, losing three wickets for just 31 runs, but they managed to post a respectable total of 151/7 on the board against Pakistan, thanks to Virat Kohli’s 57 in Dubai.
Defending 151 in Dubai, India started with Bhuvneshwar Kumar while Mohammed Shami bowled the second over, and Zaheer felt that’s where Kohli went wrong, as he believed that Men in Blue should have opened the bowling with Bumrah instead of bringing him in the third over when both Pakistan openers, Babar Azam (68*) and Mohammad Rizwan (79*), had settled into a good rhythm.
Zaheer Khan told Cricbuzz: “You have your plans before the game, but once you are in the game, you’ve just got to go with it - maybe change certain things that you had planned. Maybe you could have used Bumrah differently. By the time the game finished, you had under-utilized Bumrah.”
He further explained, “They could have gone for their trump card right up front rather than getting him into the game in the third over. Starting with him might have turned things around a bit. But these are things in hindsight. At times, you stick to the strategy which you have made.
I am sure the think-tank in the innings break would have thought about it and chosen otherwise. But who would have expected that the two openers would just carry the innings through.”
However, the former pacer admitted that the dew factor did play a role in the match, but credited Pakistan the way they played to win their first-ever match in the World Cup against India.
He signed off by saying, “The dew factor did play a role. Having said that, when you know that dew is going to be a factor, you've got to have that extra cushion of 20-25 runs on the board, just to stay on top of things. But today wasn’t the case.
Right throughout the game, you saw Pakistan in control of the game. They showed the intent, and India was always trying to catch up in this particular game, which was pretty obvious.”
