T20 World Cup 2022: 3 big mistakes in Team India’s campaign

Amid all the hope and hype of a possible India-Pakistan T20 World Cup 2022 final, Team India bowed out of the competition in the most listless manner. Expected to give England a tough fight in the second semi-final at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday, November 10, the Men in Blue just did not turn up for the knockout clash. They ended up going down by 10 wickets.

Batting first after losing the toss, Team India got off to a poor start, losing openers KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma cheaply. The in-form Suryakumar Yadav also could not deliver on the big day. Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya were left to rescue the innings with contrasting half-centuries as India posted 168/6.

Team India would have been reasonably satisfied with their batting recovery. However, the bowling was atrociously poor, as a result of which England ran away with the game. Once the opposition openers zoomed their way to 63/0 at the end of the powerplay, India's exit from the T20 World Cup was more or less a certainty.

While Team India did top their group after the Super 12 stage, winning four of their five games, their campaign was not as smooth as the stats mislead one into believing.

Here are three major mistakes Team India committed during their T20 World Cup 2022 journey.

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#1 Not giving Chahal a single game

Yuzvendra Chahal warmed the benches throughout India’s World Cup campaign. Pic: Getty Images

Agreed, Yuzvendra Chahal did not have a great run in the build-up to the T20 World Cup. He struggled in the Asia Cup as well as in the subsequent home series. However, not giving him a single match during the entire World Cup was a mistake, especially since Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel were not doing the job.

The off-spinner did pick up six wickets from six matches, but five of those came against Zimbabwe and the Netherlands. He was wicketless against Pakistan and Bangladesh as well in the second semi-final against England. In the game against South Africa as well, he managed only one wicket, and that too after being plundered for plenty of runs.

Axar’s T20 World Cup was nothing short of a disaster. He claimed two wickets against the Netherlands but was taken apart by most other opponents. Team India were literally playing with 10 players as he wasn’t contributing with the bat as well. The whole idea of playing Ashwin and Axar over Chahal was to strengthen the batting.

Ashwin did strike a couple of crucial blows, but Axar was a complete failure. Chahal’s presence might have weakened the batting to an extent. But once Team India realized that the Ashwin-Axar spin combo wasn’t working, they had to take that risk with Chahal, which they did not.

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#2 No clarity over Pant vs Karthik debate

Dinesh Karthik and Rishabh Pant ahead of the semi-final against England. Pic: Hotstar

Team India’s lack of clarity stood out like a sore thumb as the Rishabh Pant versus Dinesh Karthik debate played out in the midst of their T20 World Cup 2022 campaign. Karthik was picked for the initial four matches, and rightly so since he did better than Pant in the build-up to the ICC event.

The 37-year-old was, however, dropped from the playing XI for Team India’s last Super 12 match against Zimbabwe. On paper, his scores of one, six, and seven point towards a massive failure with the willow. However, as the cliche goes, numbers can often be misleading.

A closer look will tell you that, barring the game against South Africa, he hardly got a chance to prove his worth with the willow. He was unlucky to get run out against Bangladesh following a mix-up with Kohli. Unlike in the case of Ashwin and Axar, Karthik perhaps deserved one more chance to try and make an impact.

Out of the blue, Team India decided to bring Pant into the mix. He registered another failure against Zimbabwe, managing only three. The think tank stuck with him for the semis against England. If the idea was to have a left-handed batter against leg-spinner Adil Rashid, that theory was thrown out of the window as Hardik Pandya was promoted ahead of Pant.

In the end, the Karthik versus Pant debate remained an unsolved puzzle, even as India’s T20 World Cup journey came to an end.

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#3 Team India papered over obvious cracks

A dejected Indian team after their loss to England. Pic: Getty Images

If one were to be brutally honest in their assessment of Team India’s T20 World Cup 2022 performance, the conclusion would be that the Men in Blue did not deserve to reach the final. It is no secret that they were placed in the easier of the two Super 12 groups. The arrangement allowed Rohit and Co. to paper over cracks against weaker teams.

Kohli single-handedly hauled them to victory against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in India’s opening match with a once-in-a-lifetime performance. But in their two games against the big teams, they came a cropper. South Africa’s fast bowlers gave India a rude reality check on a pacy surface in Perth. In the semi-finals, England bossed them and brought their campaign to a standstill.

All along, India were playing with fire by ignoring warning signals. Be it their opening woes or the spin conundrum, Team India never resorted to any corrective measures. They remained in denial right through and, in the end, paid the price for refusing to switch to proactive mode.

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