Legendary Indian cricketer, Sunil Gavaskar reckons that Team India lost a lot of self-confidence after they lost to Pakistan by 10 wickets in their T20 World Cup opener and that it showed in the way Virat Kohli and his men approached the crunch game against New Zealand on Sunday. Speaking to India Today, Sunil Gavaskar said India was taken aback by their first loss to Pakistan in a World Cup campaign and that they looked demoralized ever since.
Sunil Gavaskar elaborated, “You have got to congratulate New Zealand for the way they played. They didn’t allow India the freedom to play their natural game. Yes, you might argue that Rohit Sharma should have opened the batting but look at the way New Zealand bowled. Having lost to Pakistan had certainly demoralized the Indian team. For the last 12 World Cup events, India hadn’t lost but suddenly they lost and they lost very badly.”
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He further explained, “And I think certainly dented their self-confidence. What they needed against New Zealand was to get off to a great start. But in the first 6 overs, they lost 2 wickets. I have been stressing that teams winning the powerplays go on to win the match. And that’s exactly what happened. New Zealand won both their bowling and batting powerplay.”
Virat Kohli has often stressed how criticism from outside doesn’t affect the Indian team and he reiterated it after India’s loss to Pakistan. However, there were a couple of changes that were made for the New Zealand clash that looked a bit desperate especially after just one defeat in the tournament.
Elaborating the same, Sunil Gavaskar said, “This outside world is not sound-proof. Somebody or the other is going to be saying something or the other, which you are going to hear. So to say that you are checking out the outside noise is easy because what t tell is we don’t care about the outside world, which is fair enough. It’s understandable because the team doesn’t want to be influenced by what has happened.”
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He further added, “But sometimes an outside perspective does help. An outside perspective which you can consider. Maybe, there is some sense in what the outside perspective is, and maybe at that particular point of time, you get into a cocoon.”
India will be locking horns with Afghanistan in a must-win game in their next Super 12 match on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi even as their chances hang by a thread.
