We did not actually lose

While everyone is disappointed that India got knocked out of the ICC T20 World Cup 2012, I was thinking that the team did not really perform that bad to deserve any amount of blame. Rather, I would say that we actually did perform better than before and better than other teams which could go on to the next stages.

The Indian team beat opponents in all the games except one (against Australia in Super Eights when rain interrupted and the bowlers could not really perform to their best). But every game the team had won, they did it very comprehensively. Every match, be it chasing, be it defending, the opponents were all-out. For these four matches, man of the match awards went to 3 different players, unlike Australia, for example, whose man was always Watson and if Watson fails – Australia fails, implying that we did not depend on single man shows. The blue brigade could defeat very strong opponents – Pakistan and England – Champions in 2009 and 2010 respectively and South Africa. Just to add, every other team also lost at least one game in the tournament, including those which qualified for the semi-finals.

It was a general assumption, before the event began, that the Indian bowling attack was weak. But our team proved it otherwise. In addition to the regular bowlers, Irfan was able to pick some early wickets. Yuvraj, after his comeback to the national team, performed well with the ball too. Virat and Raina could occasionally increase pressure on the batsmen by controlling run rate, if they did not take wickets. But the batting line-up, which was really strong on paper, did not collectively perform. However, each player contributed in one or the other game and just managed to put up defendable scores on board.

Some fans attributed India’s knock-out to Australia’s poor performance in their match against Pakistan. But it is never the case. As Dhoni says, “We can never control the game of other teams.” All we could have done is score 30 more runs in the ultimate match. We knew the Proteas averaged 140 in the tournament. So, our goal must have been to put a 170 plus mark on the board for the South African team to chase and we failed. That would also have increased pressure on the already knocked-out team. This was the only thing where we, I think, went wrong.

Anyway, for an Indian fan, from the entertainment point of view, the matches did not disappoint. The match with Afghanistan was exciting. We thrashed the England team (by 90 runs – A big margin!!). The match made in heaven – India Vs Pakistan – history was not re-written, we won it. The match with South Africa was nerve wracking as well. We got a lot of positive things to bring back home.