[PPS]

Originally Posted by NPV

In T20I format, I think we need to take a bold approach by retaining just Pant, Kohli, Hardik, Surya,

Kohli should retire, read somewhere he alongwith few others won't be considered in T20s till next ODI WC. Pant hasn't been great in T20s so far, he should only play ODIs & Tests. We already have Ishan Kishan + Samson who are able keeper-batsman, both should ideally feature in a T20 XI. Hooda should also be considered since he can bowl a few overs. XI should be picked based on the batting position. There's no point picking Hooda & then asking him to bat at no.6 position as a finisher! I'd rather have Tewatia in that role & hope that he can chip in with 1-2 overs. Basically this entire T20 setup needs to be overhauled. England did it several years ago, there's no reason why India can't do it. It obviously won't happen with this Selection Committee + this Team Management!

and rethink and replace the rest of the team composition with the theme being young blood and a team that can bat really deep (more all rounders). Get Shaw, Samson, Ruturaj, Padikkal, etc.

Unfortunately none of Shaw,Ruturaj, Paddikal can bowl. And none of our bowlers can bat. Team has to look at bowlers like Deepak Chahar, Harshal Patel & Washington Sundar who can bat a bit, at the same time see to it that Bowling has some venom.

In my opinion, T20 is more of a tactical and impulsive game, need quick decisions and responses and is best suited for the youngsters with some help from few seniors to lead and mentor them.

In T20s its about matchups & you need to flexible & have quick thinking. For example, today Pant I assumed was picked to take on the spinners & target the short square boundary but he only came into bat in the 19th over when spinners bowled 7 overs at 6rpo.

[Eddy]

Seriously, the selection needs to be modernised. T20 is a specialists game now, just like tests.

In the England playing 11 today, only Ben Stokes is a regular in the test team. And he is not the first pick in T20s.

For India - KL, Rohit, Kohli, Pant, Ashwin, Shami, Axar all play both T20s and tests. We are not going to win any T20 trophies with such a mix.

[Shumi_21]

I cried in 2019
I was sad in 2021
I don't feel a thing in 2022

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by Shumi_21

I cried in 2019
I was sad in 2021
I don't feel a thing in 2022

Oh, you're a millenial. My crying started in 1996, along with Kambli

I am fine today. We got what we actually deserved.

[Shumi_21]

Originally Posted by Eddy

Oh, you're a millenial. My crying started in 1996, along with Kambli

I was 4 in 96, but I have heard enough stories from my cricket crazy family.

Originally Posted by Eddy

I am fine today. We got what we actually deserved.

Man! These one sided losses are the hardest to get over. England haven't owned us like this since 1947!!

There's only one plausible explanation: Like Ricky Ponting did in 2003, Jos Buttler and Alex Hales have had springs fitted to their bats.

[tchsvy]

The biggest issue for me was the mentality. Butler started of saying 'I am not afraid of anyone and I will play the ball not the bowler'. While Rohit was defending himself and other batters who were under performing. It showed on the field, Rohit was playing for his place. Irrespective of this match and the result today, we have accumulators as our top 3. When most of the teams are scoring >60 runs in the powerplay our team tries to keep the wickets. 'Settle in, then go bezerk later on' isn't working anymore, more often hampering the team's chances of a big score.

I knew the match was a goner when we scored 60 odd runs in the first 10 overs!
</Rant>

[landcruiser123]

T20 has become a specialists game with players going all guns blazing from ball 1. India is still playing in the ODI mould of accumulating and slogging in the last 5-6 overs. To be fair, even Australia is doing the same thing india is - they expect Maxwell (and maybe Wade/Green/Stoinis) to make up for the low strike rates of the top 3.

Time for Indian team management to get radical - Rishabh Pant should be opening in ODIs and T20I and asked to relentlessly attack. We can only afford 1 (or maybe 2) accumulators in a T20I side.

[landcruiser123]

And BTW, what happened is not new. Lendl Simmons and Russell out muscled us in 2016 WT20 finals too:
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/...full-scorecard

We had some Kohli magic then, but all the others were wasting balls while accumulating.

[KPR]

Originally Posted by Eddy

And the elephant in the room is Rahul Dravid. Who will address that problem?

I was once thinking Ravi Shastri was making mockery of Dravid. Now I understand how big and small a person can be in T20 format. Excerpts from what Dravid has spoken about T20 on the eve of Ind Vs Ban:

I think the fact that it is already such a short format. 20 overs is such a short format of the game. The margins of victory and defeat sometimes even if they're 12 runs, 15 runs, it's actually just two hits. It's two hits one way or the other, and actually that's the game. So it is already a shortened sort of rushed, noisy format, but it's very difficult to sometimes say who's a clear favourite in some of these games

There is absolutely no winning fire or desire by our coach that too in a world cup. I think Buttler and Hales have addressed the elephant with their bats.

[Oxy]

With this top three we were never going to win. Rohit and Dravid need to be sacked immediately if Roger Binny has any shame.

This is what you get when utter failures like Rahul are not held accountable. The bowling is club level too, full of trundlers, not a single genuine quick. On such grounds with short boundaries, you need an enforcer like Haris Rauf, not a trundling brigade. Arshdeep was our best bowler this tournament, and he is as good as Sam Curran at best.

The entire batting approach needs a massive overhaul. I knew the game was gone when we ended up with 38 runs in the powerplay on this pitch. There is absolutely no hope with such red tape appointments like Vikram Rathore and Chetan Sharma.

We deserve this humiliation. Now we will arrange a series with West Indies at home where Rahul will score heavily and that will be the bandaid. Nothing will change. Just enjoy the IPL circus.

[deehunk]

Roger Binny has just entered into a rotten system, BCCI was better handled by administrators than cricketers. What is the background of the BCCI secretary? If Harshal Patel or Chahal would not play in crucial matches, why were they even picked? This WC gave BCCI a reason to finish DK and Ashwin's careers, Chahal was spared to give more opportunities. Rahul has become like an ever pregnant never delivery specimen, Rohit has been rested to gain more weight and or do new commercials. Unless the TRP and commercials are not affected, BCCI will not bother about anything. I like Sachin's stance to stay away from the cricket administration and focus on his personal life.
To be more brutally critical, the fall started when an aging Dhoni was left on his terms to play till the 2019 WC debacle. Kohli is 34 and SKY is already 32, we don't even have a proper top order with youngsters, our current players are either already exposed or too old to play international cricket.

[Shumi_21]

Our prospects in this World Cup were not very great to begin with, but a couple of instances involving both our neighbours made the ever optimistic Indian cricket fan in us believe. A determined Virat unlocked a nigh impossible level of skill for two balls from Haris Rauf against Pakistan, that left everyone buzzing in awe. Bangladesh miraculously lost the plot in a chase, making us see it as a result of India’s accomplishment rather than the latest act of hara-kiri by Shakib Al Hasan and Co. So when we were predictably outgunned by the South African pace battery, we put it down to the pitch in Perth, that it was just one bad game. And continued to believe.

This belief was strengthened by Hardik on the big day, & Surya through most games, ably supported by a lively Arshdeep. Maybe we will win the cup after all. We'll even trample our arch rivals Pakistan in the final in our march to victory. We believed.

Nothing shatters belief worse than logic. And come the knockouts, the logical consequences of our old mistakes would come crashing down on our heartening belief.

What were these mistakes? The tactical timidity of our top order is the most glaring. Especially how the openers on both sides won and lost the semi final for their respective teams. Even an IPL team wouldn't have KL, Rohit and Virat as their top 3 and they would be perfectly right for doing so. KL is especially frustrating, because he might be the most talented of the trio when it comes to T20 but he doesn't seem to have one tenth of the will as the other two. The fact that he might take over captaincy from Rohit makes me shudder.

Since taking over last year, Rohit + Dravid have conducted "experiments" to "learn" lessons to be applied in the World Cup. But these experiments were hyper-cautious. No contenders for the opening slots were given a good run. The case of a player who can intimidate oppositions in Rishabh Pant not being backed at the top is infuriating. It was almost saying that we will experiment, but not with the holy trinity at the top. Opposing teams exploited this timidity to the T by applying pressure in the first 6 overs. Our openers could neither score runs nor save wickets in the power play.

The management didn't replace Axar despite failures with a more attacking option in Yuzi, because they wanted a "cushion" in the batting even though we were playing conservatively at the start. Again, experiment but defensively. Both the teams to reach the final have wrist spinners in Adil Rashid and Shadab Khan. While all Yuzi did was Chahal TV.

The team management ironically didn't take risks while experimenting in the garb of being "consistent" in selection leading up to the World Cup. If that was the case, then why was Shami out in the cold for a year, or why was Rishabh not given any clarity on his role? Everyone and their cousin could tell that Harshal Patel who's one and only card of bowling slower balls wouldn't be effective in Aussie conditions. Yet he was kept on warming the bench, while an injury replacement Shami, who hadn't played in almost a year was preferred over him.

All these moves show a surprising lack of foresight and clarity in thought, both of which we have come to expect from Rohit + Dravid over the years.

Ravi Shastri who was on commentary when we won in 2007 & 2011, was ironically on air as Butler hit the winning six over Virat's head. As the ball flew over Virat Kohli at the long on boundary, he exclaimed,
"It's over Kohli!" Ravi was spot on.
It's over, Rohit Sharma
It's over, Rahul Dravid
It's over, KL Rahul
It's over, Indian Cricket Fans.

[RoadTiger]

No matter what strategy, planning, selection decisions you make - ultimately, its the 11 players who play the match who have to perform.

On paper, we brought in some of our best and most experienced batsmen - Rohit, KL, Kohli, Surya, Pandya - They are as skilled and experienced in the T20 format and pressure situations as any could get.

We backed non-performers like KL, Rohit, Ashwin, Axar over the last many, many matches hoping that backing from the team mgmt would provide them confidence & help them ultimately strike form when it mattered.

Our fast bowling selection from Day 1 was an interesting choice - we had dibbly-dobbly bowlers particularly Bhuvi who rely on conditions favouring them (swing) and batsmen's mistakes (e.g. misreading change of pace) - versus 'impact fast bowlers' when other teams were playing genuine pace like Mark Wood, Boult, Cummins, Afridi, Naseem etc

Our spinners were perhaps the worst performing - Ashwin for all his experience bowled poorly. He seemed to be playing only because many teams have left-handed batters and apparently, statistics say offspinners do well against them. Great - but then either have statistics play matches or know that you need to need to actually perform on the ground. Ashwin's bowling was sub par all through the WC and yet played the semis thanks to this theory. Axar looked like a fish out of water on these pitches and for reasons unknown, a strike bowler like Chahal was left warming the benches. Our spinners collectively had the least wickets (except for Ashwin's 3 in a space of 2 overs against Zim) in the tournament for any major team. That Adil Rashid and Livingstone bowled better than Ashwin & Axar stings.

The biggest mistake IMHO was - we refused to learn from our mistakes. We suffered in the last tournament when Afridi struck 2 blows - Rohit and KL - in the first 2 overs and we took this exact same conservative approach after that and lost the game. For all the chat prior to the WC, where Rohit said we now have plans for every situation - we lost the match in the first 10 overs with our timid batting - knowing fully well that the English batsmen bat hard & deep. In fact, without Pandya's special innings, our total would've looked even less competitive. Its almost like batting without taking risks - and hoping the opposition falters. Of course, our bowling did nothing special - we were just waiting for England's mistakes. Timid bowling selection.

Another ICC tournament - no silverware - no lessons learnt from past.

HUGE fan of Dravid - but feel he & Rohit have to take accountability for a lot of the above issues.

[PPS]

Originally Posted by KPR

There is absolutely no winning fire or desire by our coach that too in a world cup.

Its time BCCI goes back to finding a good foreign coach! Not just the coach infact, the entire coaching staff which includes batting,bowling,fielding coach! I was against the idea of appointing Dravid as the Coach back then as he had done a good job at the NCA & 'A' team. Dravid has infact been incharge since his appointment & he's only succeeded in creating bench strength for the team & he was doing precisely the same thing before at NCA & with the 'A' team! The Selectors were against split captaincy in white ball format earlier, but I guess now they have no choice. Don't mind splitting the coaches as well depending on format. You can sack the coaches but its ultimately the players on the field who have to perform.

[PreludeSH]

The players who we think should have been in team would have played ? We have a rotten system in IPL with docile pitches and no pressure to be consistent. I am sure we had the right 15. Pant should have played all matches, else I dont think anything would have mattered.

We need bowlers to win matches. We lack pace and hitting the deck kind of bowlers. As I said before not many big scores in the WC. 180 would have been good. But I doubt we would have won even after scoring 200. Every time we had lost early wickets, we have been able to put up decent scores.

Shastri was a laid back coach. I am not sure he did any true coaching. He was lucky with players who had the will and performed. We are looking at solutions without looking at problems