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A crushing defeat against arch-rivals Pakistan in the opening game in the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 dented India’s self-confidence, which reflected in how the Men in Blue approached the crunch game against New Zealand on Sunday, feels the former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar.
The legendary batter speaking to India Today congratulated Kane Williamson and the BlackCaps for an exemplary show against the 2007 T20 World Cup champions.
“You have to congratulate New Zealand for the way they played. They didn’t allow India the freedom to play their natural game. Yes, you might argue that Rohit Sharma should have opened the batting but look at the way New Zealand bowled,” Gavaskar said
Gavaskar said India’s first loss to their neighbors in the World Cup demoralized the team and their confidence eventually took a beating against New Zealand.
“Having to lost to Pakistan had certainly demoralized the Indian team. For the last 12 World Cup events, India hadn’t lost but suddenly they lost and they lost very badly. And I think certainly dented their self-confidence. What they needed against New Zealand was to get off to a great start. But in the first six overs, they lost two wickets,” added Gavaskar.
Gavaskar feels an outside perspective might help the team, contrary to captain Virat Kohli’s belief that criticism from outside doesn’t matter to the dressing room.
“This outside world is not sound-proof. Somebody or the other is going to be saying something or the other, which you are going to hear. So to say that you are chucking out the outside noise is easy because that tell we don’t care about the outside world, which is fair enough. It’s understandable because the team doesn’t want to be influenced by what has happened. But sometimes an outside perspective does help. An outside perspective which you can consider. Maybe, there is some sense in what the outside perspective is and maybe at that particular point of time, you get into a cocoon,” concluded the former India skipper.
Back-to-back defeats in two games have shrunk India’s chances in the World Cup and the Net Run Rate (NRR) has taken a beating. Now, India have an uphill task ahead of them with three group stage matches still to go.
To keep the hopes alive for a semi-final berth, there are a lot of permutations and combinations involved. India need to win all of their remaining matches and boost their net run rate (NRR) by big wins, especially against Scotland and Namibia. Even then, for India to qualify, Afghanistan need to beat New Zealand in their next match and then lose to India. If India, Afghanistan and New Zealand end up with three wins each after the group stage matches, it will boil down to their NRR. India would also hope that Afghanistan beat New Zealand by a good margin and bring their NRR by a considerable margin.
India face a must-win situation when they square off against Afghanistan in their next Super 12 match on November in Abu Dhabi.
