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'You can't teach…': Rohit Sharma's reply to why India win bilaterals but not World Cups after semifinal defeat
India were a 10th time unlucky in a knockout match of the ICC tournament as they emerged second best to England in the 2nd semifinal of the T20 World Cup, with captain Rohit Sharma explaining the reason behind it.
India were a 10th time unlucky in a knockout match of the ICC tournament as they emerged second best to England in the 2nd semifinal of the T20 World Cup. Jos Buttler and Alex Hales slammed explosive half-centuries as England defeated India by 10 wickets to reach the final where they will play Pakistan at the MCG on Sunday. With the defeat, India's barren run at ICC tournaments continue as they have now lost four consecutive World Cup semifinals.
After the defeat, India captain Rohit Sharma wore a dejected look in the dugout and expectedly so. After getting himself together, he came to address the post-match press conference where he spoke at length as to what went wrong for India on the day. For starters, Rohit stated that while he was eventually content that India reached 168 in the end, scoring 47 in the last three overs, the skipper lamented his team's poor outing with the ball.
"It's pretty disappointing how we turned up today. I thought we still batted pretty well at the back end to get to that score, but we were not good enough with the ball. It was definitely not a wicket where a team can come and chase it down in 16 overs. With the ball we didn't turn up today," Rohit said.
The captain was asked the inevitable question - India's inability to go over the line in the knockout stages. Since 2013, India have played seven knockouts matches, reaching the final thrice – 2014 World T20, 2017 Champions Trophy and the World Test Championship, and finishing semi-finalists four times. But while the team has gone on a rampage picking up countless wins in bilateral series around the world, they have repeatedly stumbled in World Cups. Rohit finally ended his silence on the topic, saying the ability to handle pressure is something that the team can get better at.
"When it comes to knockout stages, it's all about handling the pressure. Depends on the individual as well. You can't teach anyone to handle pressure. When these guys play the playoffs in the IPL and all that, those are high-pressure games, and they're able to handle it. The way we started with the ball was not ideal. We were a little nervy, but you have to give credit to the openers as well. They played really well," he added.
Rohit mentioned that the toss had little to do with the outcome of the match, but in order to defend 169, India needed wickets early on. Buttler and Hales, however, had other plans as they did not allow the bowlers to catch a break and went berserk. Despite the first two overs, bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Arshdeep Singh, the Indian seamers struggled for swing. Spinners Axar Patel and R Ashwin were equally ineffective as England ran away with the game to eventually seal the win in just 16 overs.
"When Bhuvi bowled the first over it swung today, but not from the right areas. We wanted to keep it tight, not give room, because square of the wicket was an area, we were aware of - that's where the runs came today. If we keep it tight and the batsman still score runs, we'll take it. But we didn't do that today. In the game against Bangladesh, it was tricky as well, but I thought we held our nerve that day, executed well," Rohit pointed out.
