Timid India's 'mindset' to blame for crushing semi-final loss, says Nasser Hussain
“Yet they were still too timid. India must have known they would need to get an above par score against this England batting line-up yet they plodded along and if it was not for Hardik at the end they would have been way below par.
India captain Rohit Sharma may have felt that their bowling performance may have been at fault for the team's sensational 10-wicket loss to England in the 2022 T20 World Cup semi-finals but a number of former cricketers seem to think otherwise. Most seem to think that the Indian top order's conservative approach in the first 10 overs, thus leading to them not being able to set an above par score for the star-studded England batting lineup to chase.
A late charge from Hardik Pandya allowed India to finish on a score of 168/6. England openers Jos Buttler and Alex Hales ended up making a mockery of the target, chasing it down with four overs to spare. Former England captain Nasser Hussain said that India's "mindset" let them down batting first. "The contrast between the two teams in their respective power-plays could not be more stark. I had said in these pages that India at the top of the order still play a bit of an old-fashioned game and even their former coach Ravi Shastri talked of the need for them to change when he worked for Sky last summer," said Hussain in a column for DailyMail.
"Yet they were still too timid. India must have known they would need to get an above par score against this England batting line-up yet they plodded along and if it was not for Hardik at the end they would have been way below par.
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"It's not India's personnel. It's their mind-set. Rohit Sharma is one of the greatest white-ball batters there has ever been and KL Rahul would be in any list of the best T20 players in the world. Then add Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik and Rishabh Pant."
Hussain said that with such a star-studded lineup, India should not have been stuck on 62/2 at the end of the 10th over. "You are talking about an array of world-class talent and there is no way that batting line-up should have been 66 (62) for two at the halfway mark of a T20 innings in a semi-final," he said.
Hussain added that England captain Jos Buttler's decision to bowl first would have had an effect on the Indian batters' approach and the match then slipped out of their hands when he smashed fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar all over the park. Buttler had struggled against Bhuvneshwar before Thursday's match.
"Buttler got them thinking about how they should play by putting them in and it proved absolutely the right thing to do. If India had been chasing a decent total they would have had to go hard but as it was they didn't seem to know what a good score would be.
"Then India just expected Bhuvneshwar Kumar to continue the hold he has had over Jos Buttler in T20 cricket when England batted but it just didn't happen. Together with the long levers of Hales at the other end, India had no answer."
