Dubai, Nov 7: Outgoing head coach Ravi Shastri and skipper Virat Kohli, who will lead the country for one last time in the shortest format, would aim to finish India’s underwhelming T20 World Cup campaign on a positive note with a victory over Namibia in the team’s final Super 12 match here on Monday.
Around 6:30 pm, New Zealand hit the winning runs against Afghanistan much to the disappointment of the Indian fans, who were hoping against hope that a miracle will happen under the blazing afternoon sun at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.
The mood in the Indian camp was evident when BCCI’s official media whataspp group had a message for the journalists “The optional training session in the evening has been cancelled.”
It was understandable dejection as for first time since the 2012 edition of this event, India had failed to make the knockout stage of an ICC event. The Indian players, who kept an eye on the TV watching Afghanistan battle it out against the Black Caps, knew by the halfway stage of the game that all of them would now have to take the flight back to their respective cities on Tuesday.
Against Namibia, the senior players would gain precious little against the David Wieses of the world save for beefing up their individual statistics. Very rarely has an Indian team played such an inconsequential game at an ICC event.
It was as if the heavens had conspired that nothing should go well for the team. And that is something that will hurt Shastri, a proud man, who has done his bit to make this a formidable all-condition Test team with a lethal fast bowling attack.
“Toss played a very, very vital role and I believe in these kind of matches, toss shouldn’t be of any consequence,” bowling coach Bharath Arun said Sunday.
“Here toss gives unfair advantage and there is a huge change in batting in the first innings and batting in the second innings. That shouldn’t be the case in short format like this,” he reiterated what has generally been the official line for the team during all these days post the New Zealand defeat.
For Kohli, who is all set to even lose his ODI captaincy in the coming days, this wasn’t how he would have liked to end his T20 captaincy stint with the national team having already quit IPL captaincy.
It is still not clear whether Kohli will be seen as a one-format captain in Test matches but his performance in the last four ICC tournaments leave a lot to be desired.
India
Virat Kohli (C), Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (WK), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Rahul Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy, Shardul Thakur
Namibia
Gerhard Erasmus (c), Stephen Baard, Karl Birkenstock. Michau du Preez, Jan Frylinck, Zane Green, Nicol Lofie-Eaton, Bernard Scholtz, Ben Shikongo, JJ Smit, Ruben Trumpelmann, Michael van Lingen, David Wiese, Craig Williams and Pikky Ya France.
Match Starts at 7:30 pm IST. (PTI)
