Zaheer Khan, the former India fast bowler, has said that “certain decisions” taken by the team management will have to be questioned after India’s unceremonious exit from the T20 World Cup 2022 where lost their semi-final match to England by a humiliating 10 wickets.
The Indian team had reached the knockouts of the tournament, losing only one match to South Africa in their group 2 Super 12s stage. They had played a match previously at Adelaide which saw Bangladesh almost making the mockery of India’s total of 184 and it was only the rain that saved face for the Men in Blue.
Despite this previous experience of the team batting second ,having it easy on the Adelaide pitch, India only managed to post 168/6 after being asked to bat first by England captain Jos Buttler. And that too was possible due to Hardik Pandya’s rapid 33-ball 63-run knock.
In reply, Indian bowlers couldn’t do anything as Jos Buttler made 80* and Alex Hales decimated the bowling for 86*, taking England home in 16 overs without losing a wicket.
In the aftermath, Zaheer Khan said that captain Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid and the Indian team management should be made answerable for certain decisions they took in the run-up to the tournament.
Decisions like conundrum over whom to pick- Dinesh Karthik or Rishabh Pant return of R Ashwin into white-ball cricket and others.
“You will have to question certain decisions, the DK-Pant scenario, we have been talking about it. Bringing Ashwin back is also something that they are going to have to look at. You have to look ahead right now. You have to work out what is going to be the ideal scenario for the team to succeed, especially in multi-nation tournaments… because we have been getting stuck at the hurdle for a while now,” Zaheer told Cricbuzz.
Zaheer said that there was no doubt India would reach the semi-finals once they beat Pakistan, but felt that bowlers let the team down as they could have taken the game deep after batters gave them a decent 169-run target to defend.
“We all knew India will find a way to get to the semis after they beat Pakistan in the first game. When you look at the semis, at 170 you can make a game out of it. They will now be thinking how the bowling could have bailed us out or what we could have done in bowling to create that fighting chance. With batting also it was not easy, but they fought hard to get themselves in a position from where you could make a game. But that was not the case with the bowling,” the 2011 World Cup winner added.
He also spoke that captain Rohit and coach Dravid had talked about a ‘process’, but failed to bring flexibility into the team which was needed in T20Is.
“You talk about process, and that is something we hear a lot from this regime. Sometimes you get caught up when you just stick to the processes. That finetuning is definitely going to be required from this regime,” Zaheer said.
