Soul-searching time

It was disheartening to crash out of the ICC Champions Trophy. Ever since I have taken over the Indian captaincy, we have made the final of every world meet, writes Sourav Ganguly.

It was disheartening to crash out of the ICC Champions Trophy. Ever since I have taken over the Indian captaincy, we have made the final of every world meet. But we failed this time. To be honest, though, the manner in which we have been playing over the past three months we didn't deserve to be in the semis.

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The boys fought till the end but we always knew we had to bowl Pakistan out to win the game. The only way to defend a total of 200 is try and bowl the opposition out.

Thanks to a wonderful opening spell from young Irfan Pathan, we made the kind of early inroads we needed to make at the beginning of Pakistan's run-chase. The others too chipped in, but the pressure of defending a small total builds up as the scoreboard keeping ticking.

And that's what Yousuf Youhana did. He and Pakistan team management knew that if he was there till the end, they would be in the semis. That is how the script unfolded.

The Inzy-Youhana partnership was the key to Pakistan's victory. If we had got one of them early, we would have probably squeezed through. But that was not to be.