India’s free-flowing Abhishek Sharma faced his kryptonite, the off-spin in the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026. Every team tried to exploit the new-found chink in the armour and most succeeded. On the night of the final, Mitchell Santner seemed to follow a similar strategy at first by bringing in Glenn Phillips but he was taken off the attack after just one over. Abhishek made full use of Santner’s lapse in judgement, defended against off-spinner and then smashed Kiwi pacers for fun in the powerplay overs. After New Zealand’s 96-run loss in the summit clash, Santner lauded Abhishek and explained how Sanju Samson's presence made him take the call to remove off-spinner from the attack.
"I think the way they played the over, Abishek I thought played that very smart. I know at times he comes a little bit hard at the off-spinner, but he gave it over to Sanju. And then I think the first kind of three overs is when the ball is doing its most. And then I think you can really capitalise on the last three of the powerplay like they did. So it was always going to be hard. I think if Sanju got out, definitely would have been another option for GP (Phillips) to bowl to the two left-handers. But when you're not taking wickets, it's always a challenge," said Santner in the post-match press conference.
Why McConchie was dropped for Duffy?
Phillips bowled just one over in the entire game and conceded five runs. In addition, Santner dropped Cole McConchie from the side. In the semifinal against South Africa, he had claimed wickets of left-handers Quinton de Kock and Ryan Rickelton in quick succession.
Santner explained how the nature of the pitch made him bench McConchie and include Jacob Duffy in the side. He also pointed out that Axar Patel and Varun Chakravarthy did not get much spin from the surface either. He felt that the Kiwi bowlers did not execute the plans properly.
"Yeah, it was a tough one. I mean, we saw at Kolkata, I think the matchup again was off-spin to their top three. Ahmedabad, the wicket, the mixed soil, usually there's no spin. There's always a little bit of bounce. I think bowling my overs, Axar’s and Chakravarty’s, there was no real spin at any stage. So I think which way you go, I think there was potentially a bit of bounce for the seamers, but I think at the end of the day it's an execution, whoever is bowling. I think when you bowl nice areas for a period of time, you could get an out of overs. I think that was the main thing. It wasn't trying to get wickets at times, it was how you'd be defensive to be attacking. I think when we did that well, we were able to squeeze, I think, a period of four overs. And they lost four wickets. But outside of that, it was a few runs," the all-rounder explained.
Duffy struggles
Duffy bowled three overs, remained wicketless and conceded 42 runs. Last year, he was New Zealand's most successful bowler in T20Is which also earned him a maiden Indian Premier League (IPL) contract with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). In the Duffy has not been at his best in T20 World Cup. He managed to bag just three wickets from five appearances.