India have kept their semi-finals hope alive with a 72-run win over Zimbabwe at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. Leading up to the match, the form of certain key batters were under the scanner as India were far away from playing an ideal brand of cricket. In the past two years, they have been extremely flamboyant in their approach but it was significantly missing in the ongoing T20 World Cup, but against Zimbabwe, all hell broke loose.
Abhishek Sharma was one of the batters who was under scrutiny, but the 26-year-old got going, scoring a quickfire 55 off 30 balls. Captain Suryakumar Yadav added 33 runs off 13, while Tilak Varma, who was demoted to number six, wreaked havoc, smacking unbeaten 44 runs off 16 balls. His form was heavily criticised, with many calling for his exclusion from the national team due to poor form.
On the other hand, Hardik Pandya made unbeaten half-century off 23 balls as India posted 256 runs in the first innings – their highest ever in T20 World Cup history. In the second innings, the bowlers did the rest of the job, securing a comfortable win.
We will tighten our screws: Suryakumar
However, after the game, captain Suryakumar called for improvement with the ball. He addressed that the team had a good day but wants to tighten the screws as the T20 World Cup heads towards the business end of the competition. Notably, conceding 184 runs wasnโt on Indiaโs memo, as the captain was arguably unhappy with that.
โWe could have been a little bit more clinical with the ball, but it’s fine at the end of the day. Win is a win, but we’ll take it when we move forward. But yeah, we’ll tighten our screws when we go and play West Indies,โ Suryakumar said in the post-match presentation.
โI don’t want to take any credit away from the batters, the Zimbabwean batters. I think they batted beautifully. Yes, the wicket was good, but the way they batted, they took their own time in the powerplay and they later on batted very smartly and credit goes to them as well. But yeah, from the bowling point of view, we could have been a little bit smarter to take those nice option,โ he added.
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