Despite winning their last three games in the tournament, Team India endured a horrid run in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 after suffering crushing defeats at the hands of arch-rivals Pakistan and their nemesis New Zealand in their first two games.
Pakistan won their tournament opener against India by 10 wickets owing to an unbeaten 152-run partnership between skipper Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. If that was a thrashing, India were restricted to 110/7 in their next against New Zealand and were beaten by eight wickets.
Ravi Shastri, for whom it was the last assignment as head coach of the Indian team, shed the light on the team’s poor performance in the two games as consecutive losses resulted in India getting knocked out from the group stage itself.
Speaking to Star Sports, Shastri said, “Pakistan played well on that day, and against New Zealand, we were timid. We were very timid. It showed in the game. We were tentative instead of going for the jugular. You never mind losing as long as you’re throwing punches. But if you’re timid and tentative then it hurts more. And in a tournament like this if you lose too early then you’re in trouble.”
The 59-year old, however, was in the favour of the playoffs format in the World Cups as well, as the IPL while appreciating the round-robin format of the 2019 Cricket World Cup where every team plays every other team at least once, which according to him is the ideal way to decide World Cups.
“It’s not like the format in 2019, where you can play every opposition. I think that is the way to go forward. That format is the best, and then have the Playoffs ideally, if you want to decide the World Cup,” Shastri further said.
