Virender Sehwag explains why India lost the semifinal against England
Rohit Sharma, Virender Sehwag (Image Credit: Twitter)
On November 10, India’s dream of winning the World Championship as they lost the semifinal of the ongoing 20-20 World Cup 2022. Batting first, the 2007 winners scored 168/6 thanks to half-centuries from Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya. In reply, England openers, skipper Jos Buttler and Alex Hales won the game for their team by 10 wickets.
After the game, India skipper Rohit Sharma said that the bowlers didn’t bowl well enough. He added that the team batting did well to get a decent target. The right-hander further said that the wicket used for the game wasn’t like where a batting team can chase down the total in 16 overs.
“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 in the post-match ceremony.
India’s top-order played slowly: Virender Sehwag
However, the 2007 20-20 World Cup winner has a different opinion from Sharma. The former pointed out that the top-order scored only 80-odd runs in 12 overs. Sehwag added that the top-order can’t bat like this in a T20I game.
“If the top order has batted 12 overs to just score 82 runs (77), then expecting the rest of the batters to come in and play fearless cricket and score 100 runs in eight overs, that is also not right. Yes, the average total of this ground maybe 150-160 and you ended up making more than that. But on the day itself, if one batter gets set on that pitch, the average total doesn’t matter. We have seen this happening a number of times here at the Wankhede stadium or the Feroz Shah Kotla or in even in Chennai. Today’s game could not have been won with scores of 150-160,” Sehwag said on Cricbuzz.
