T20 World Cup 2022: "Only one team was playing" - Irfan Pathan on India's crushing defeat against England
Irfan Pathan has pointed out that India failed to turn up for their T20 World Cup 2022 semi-final against England.
The Men in Blue suffered a crushing 10-wicket defeat in the second semi-final in Adelaide on Thursday, November 10. They posted a total of 168/6 after being asked to bat first, which was chased down by the England openers in just 16 overs without being separated.
While reviewing the game on Star Sports, Pathan criticized the Indian team's performance, elaborating:
"They didn't fight at all. It seemed the Indian team didn't come to the ground at all. Only one team was playing and they went to the final, that was England. You might be seeing the emotions on Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant's faces, they are disappinted but you need to be disappointed as well."
Pathan was particularly disappointed with the Indian batters' timid approach in the first 10 overs of their innings. The former India all-rounder explained:
"The way you batted, in the first 10 overs your run rate was around six and you had lost only three wickets. You were playing extremely slow and after that also we reached around 170. If we had run faster from the start, the score would have been slightly higher."
India lost because of batting not bowling.
India scored 62/2 in the first 10 overs of their innings. Hardik Pandya's belligerent knock (63 off 33) seemed to have taken them to a competitive total but it proved way below-par in the end.
"Extremely disappointing" - Irfan Pathan on India's bowling performance
Pathan highlighted that the Indian bowlers did an encore of their wicketless bowling performance from last year's T20 World Cup clash against Pakistan. He said:
"Then it comes to the bowling, the Pakistan match in the last World Cup, not even one wicket fell there, that was in the league stage and here it was the semi-final, you couldn't pick up a wicket here as well, extremely disappointing."
Pathan added that the defensive lines and lengths bowled by the Indian bowlers were never going to give them the desired results. The cricketer-turned-commentator observed:
"You bowled too wide, you didn't bowl inswing. Only three balls in the powerplay were bowled in the areas where you get swing. Other than that, the length was eight meters, which means you became defensive and you will not get much swing from there. You cannot bowl defensively on the big stage."
Humiliating defeat. Poor club class bowling exposed in just one game. Credit to England Team for the clinical performance and made the mockery of India.
Jos Buttler smashed three boundaries in the first over bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar, with the swing bowler being either too wide or drifting onto the pads. The Indian bowlers never recovered from that onslaught as they conceded 63 runs in the powerplay overs to all but end their chances of staging a comeback in the game.