It has been a few days since India outclassed Pakistan in the World Cup 2023 encounter in Ahmedabad but there has been no end to the controversy related to the crowds. Ahead of Pakistan’s clash against Ahmedabad, head coach Grand Bradburn went on to call the crowd at Narendra Modi Stadium “hostile”. Bradburn said that it was unusual to be playing in front of a crowd where most of the support was for the home team.
“There is always pressure on the team to win. When we do not, we critique our performances very, very closely and we've done that over the last couple of days, too. I think the experiences from Ahmedabad were fantastic,” he said.
“It was a great opportunity to learn and grow from the whole experience of playing in front of a very large, hostile crowd. It is unusual to play in front of a crowd, which is pretty much, you know, solely there for the opposition. However, it was nice to hear some silence as well at times when we were batting well.”
Pakistan's batting lineup suffered a massive collapse as they went from 155/2 to 191 all out. Bradburn revealed that the team had some honest conversations about it and the road ahead. He also talked about the bowling not being up to the mark.
“We had some really good honest conversations yesterday as a group talking about how we wanted to take the game on more and we did have an opportunity to be a little bit more assertive with the bat earlier on,” he said.
“As a result, we put ourselves under a little bit of pressure and then you know, we just didn't get enough to really put pressure on in the second innings. That, however, doesn't take away from the fact that as a group, we've also acknowledged that we didn't put enough balls in good areas,” the former New Zealand cricketer further added.
Babar Azam-led Pakistan will take on Pat Cummins’ Australia at M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. Ahead of the clash, Fakhar Zaman has been ruled out due to a knee niggle while a few other players are yet to recover from fever. The team management may look to make a few changes to the side considering small boundaries and a batting-friendly track.
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