BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has opened up on India’s group stage performance from the T20 World Cup 2021. He said that it was the team’s ‘poorest’ performance in the last four to five years. He also said that they got ‘stuck’ in their matches against Pakistan and New Zealand, didn’t play with freedom and showed only 15 percent of their abilities.
Sourav Ganguly said while talking to journalist Boria Majumdar on his show “Backstage with Boria”: “To be honest, 2017 [and] 2019, I think India was good. 2017 Champions Trophy we lost the final to Pakistan at the Oval, I was a commentator then. Then the 2019 World Cup in England, we were exceptional right throughout, beat everyone and lost to New Zealand in the semi-final – one bad day and the entire good work for two months was just wiped away. [I am] a little disappointed with the way we played this World Cup. I think this has been the poorest of all what I have seen in the last four-five years.”
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The former skipper further added: “I don’t know what’s the reason but I just felt they did not play with enough freedom this World Cup. Sometimes it happens in big tournaments, you just get stuck and when I saw them playing against Pakistan and New Zealand – I just felt this was the team which was playing to 15% of its ability. And sometimes you can’t just a finger on it that this is the reason why it happened.”
However, India’s T20 World Cup 2021 campaign was a rather forgettable one where they started with the losses to Pakistan (10 wickets) and New Zealand (eight wickets) in the first two games. Although they won the last three matches, that wasn’t enough to qualify for the knockout stages as well.
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“Hopefully, they’ll learn from it because see, the difference from my generation and this is that [now] there’s a world title tournament every year. The next cycle will have eight tournaments in eight years. So, it will be an opportunity for them to turn things around and hopefully in Australia this team will play a lot better. The talent is without any question, the ability of players is without any question, it’s just that I felt the execution in this World Cup wasn’t good,” Sourav Ganguly concluded.
