T20 World Cup 2021: "India's batting was like a flight that never took off" - Aakash Chopra
Aakash Chopra has compared India's batting performance in their T20 World Cup 2021 loss against New Zealand to a flight that never took off.
Team India meandered to a lowly score of 110/7 while batting first in their almost must-win encounter against the Black Caps. The Kane Williamson-led side then cantered to an easy win with eight wickets in hand and 33 deliveries to spare.
While reflecting on India's batting performance in a video shared on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra pointed out that their batters were strangulated by the Kiwi bowlers. He explained:
"India's batting was like a flight that never took off. We were waiting for it to gather pace but it never happened. Whenever we were getting slightly fast, a wicket was falling. Overall, we were strangled by the opposing team."
The cricketer-turned-commentator added that the Kiwi bowlers kept the Indian batters in check with regular use of short-pitched deliveries. Aakash Chopra observed:
"An important aspect is that the fast bowlers bowled bouncers at us. And it is a template of sorts, we have seen this earlier as well. England also bowled bouncers against us in the first match at Ahmedabad and here they also bowled short balls repeatedly where you couldn't score runs."
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Aakash Chopra highlighted that the plethora of dot balls caused the Indian batters to throw away their wickets by playing extravagant strokes. He said:
"When you didn't score runs, you eventually played a bad shot and got out. When you see the highlights, you say that a bad shot was played but the dot balls in between don't come in the highlights. You were kept quiet by back of length balls that came near your ears."
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Almost all the Indian batters were caught in the deep while playing the big shots. Their failure to rotate the strike stalled their innings and they had no option but to take the aggressive route.
"Rishabh Pant, there was a lot of expectation but it didn't happen" - Aakash Chopra
Aakash Chopra concluded by stating that India were well short of a defendable score, with Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya also failing to live up to the expectations from them. He elaborated:
"110 runs are not enough. Rishabh Pant, there was a lot of expectation but it didn't happen. Hardik Pandya - 23 runs off 23 balls, not exactly there, you wanted an absolute cameo."
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Pant managed just 12 runs off 18 deliveries before he was castled by Adam Milne. Pandya holed out to Martin Guptill at long-off off Trent Boult's bowling after a run-a-ball effort.