Former England captain and commentator, Nasser Hussain, cited the 'timid' performance by the batters in the first ten overs as one of the key factors in the heavy defeat of Team India’s star-studded lineup against England in the second semi-final of the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 at Adelaide Oval on November 10.
He mentioned that if Hardik Pandya (63 off 33 balls) had not gone berserk, India could not have posted the 169-run target after they were stuck at 62/2 at the end of the 10th over against England. Hussain further said that it was the players’ "mindset" that let the Indian team down first against England.
Nasser Hussain wrote in his column for DailyMail: “The contrast between the two teams in their respective power-plays could not be more stark. I had said in these pages that India at the top of the order still play a bit of an old-fashioned game and even their former coach Ravi Shastri talked of the need for them to change when he worked for Sky last summer.”
Speaking about India’s batting show at Adelaide Oval, Hussain wrote: “Yet they were still too timid. India must have known they would need to get an above par score against this England batting line-up yet they plodded along and if it was not for Hardik at the end, they would have been way below par.”
The commentator continued, “It's not India's personnel. It's their mind-set. Rohit Sharma is one of the greatest white-ball batters there has ever been and KL Rahul would be in any list of the best T20 players in the world. Then add Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik and Rishabh Pant. You are talking about an array of world-class talent and there is no way that batting line-up should have been 66 (62) for two at the halfway mark of a T20 innings in a semi-final.”
Meanwhile, Hussain lauded England captain Jos Buttler's decision to bowl first against India, and then the way England started to attack Bhuvneshwar Kumar, leaving the Indians with no answer in the semi-final clash, as they went on to win the match by 10 wickets to qualify for the final.
The former captain said, “Buttler got them thinking about how they should play by putting them in and it proved absolutely the right thing to do. If India had been chasing a decent total they would have had to go hard but as it was they didn't seem to know what a good score would be.”
He signed off by saying, “Then India just expected Bhuvneshwar Kumar to continue the hold he has had over Jos Buttler in T20 cricket when England batted but it just didn't happen. Together with the long levers of Hales at the other end, India had no answer.”
