Rohit Sharma admits wrong decision making cost India’s T20 World Cup.
T20 World Cup 2021: Team India’s limited-overs vice-captain Rohit Sharma in the post-match conference, yesterday, admitted that the wrong decisions in the first two matches dented India’s hopes for the ongoing T20 World Cup 2021.
Sharma made no bones about the fact that Indian cricketers have been playing consistent cricket for a long time and mental fatigue has played a huge role in India getting slipped out of its first two matches against Pakistan and New Zealand.
Rohit Sharma played a match-defining knock of 74 runs against Afghanistan to power India to a much-needed win against Afghanistan. India won its third match by 66 runs and opened its account in ICC T20 World Cup 2021 points table. Sharma was adjudged as the Men of the Match for his brilliant innings.
“The approach was different. I wish it was in the first two games as well but it didn’t happen. But that can happen when you are on the road for a long time. Decision making sometimes can be a problem and that’s exactly what happened in the first two games,” Rohit said at the post-match press conference.
Sharma further elaborated that mental fitness and freshness is something which is required to make good decisions consistently on the field which apparently didn’t happen in the first two matches.
India played against England in their own backyard then came to the IPL’s UAE leg and following which the T20 World Cup 2021 is happening, so there has been a lot of cricket for over four to five months for the Indians.
“The amount of cricket that is being played and amount of cricket we are playing, every time you step onto the field, you have to make the right decision,” Rohit said.
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“You need to ensure that you are fresh in terms of mental aspect. May be that’s the reason why we didn’t take some good decisions. When you play a lot of cricket, these kind of things keep happening. You need to get away from the game and freshen up your mind.
The vice-captain, who is likely to assume the Indian skipper’s role in T20Is, further showed his resentment over people terming team India a “bad team” for those two poor losses. He asserted that a couple of bad games can’t make a team poor.
“It didn’t happen in two games but that doesn’t mean that we have become bad players overnight. If you have two bad games, it doesn’t mean that all players are bad, those who are running the team are bad, you reflect and you comeback and that’s what we did in this game,” he said.
Several frustrated Indian fans trolled and criticised the Indian players for a poor display of performance against Pakistan and New Zealand. Every Indian cricketer was the target of people’s rage and disappointment after back to back defeats and faced massive backlash on social media.
“In these situations, you have to stay fearless and not think about what is happening elsewhere. We are a very good team but just that we were not great on that particular day against Pakistan and also against New Zealand. The game that we played sums it up that this is what we get when we play fearlessly,” he said, summing it up.
Virat Kohli and Co will now face Scotland and Namibia on 5th and 8th November in Dubai International Stadium, in its two final fixtures.
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