England defeated India by 10 wickets in the second semifinal of the T20 World Cup on Thursday. India head coach Rahul Dravid expressed his take after the embarrassing loss.
In the match, after winning the toss, England opted to bowl first. The men in blue managed to set a target of 169 runs. For England’s Alex Hales and If Buttlerit was just a cakewalk and they chased the score in just 16 overs.
Former India star player Dravid said, “Disappointed finish in the semis. Would have liked to go to the finals. They were the better team in all departments. After a loss like this, it’s tough to reflect on things. Overall, we ran a pretty good campaign. Showed good skills.
We can look back at things we have improved on and build it for the next World Cup. Runs on the board were something. It’s just that maybe when the game started, the boys said the wicket was slow and tacky. We had a good last over. We should have been able to get 180-185,” he added.
Talking about England’s performance, “England played well and it’s the reality. They brought the run rate down, they controlled that game. They didn’t need to take any risk, not that they didn’t as they played some really good shots too. It’s disappointing for sure. The debacle is not the right word for it, disappointing certainly is,” he said before signing off.
On the future of senior players in the squad, Dravid said, It’s too early to talk about that just after the game. This is not the right time to talk about it. We will try and build for the next World Cup.”
Rohit Sharma after the match:
“Pretty disappointed how it turned up today. We batted well at the backend to get that score. We were not up to the mark with the ball, we couldn’t turn up today. It’s all about handling the pressure in knockout games. All these guys have played enough to understand that. These guys have played under pressure in IPL games, it’s all about keeping calm. When we won the first game, it showed a lot of character.”
India Playing XI:
KL RahulRohit Sharma, Virat KohliSuryakumar Yadav, Hardik PandyaRishabh Pant, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed ShamiArshdeep Singh
England Playing XI:
Jos Buttler, Alex Hales, Philip Salt, Ben Stokes, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Moeen AliSam Curran, Chris Woakes, Chris Jordan, Adil Rashid