According to skipper Suryakumar Yadav, India played a batter short on purpose to test themselves in the fourth Twenty20 against New Zealand on Wednesday in Visakhapatnam. India experimented by fielding six specialist batters, including Hardik Pandya, who did not bowl that day, after securing the five-match series.
India typically bats till number eight, but Harshit Rana was batted at seven. India lost the match by 50 runs, proving that the strategy was ineffective.
“We purposely played six batters today. We wanted to have five perfect bowlers and wanted to challenge ourselves. Like for example, if we’re chasing 200 or 180, and we wanted to see if we were two down or three down, how does it look? But then it’s fine at the end of the day. And we wanted to play all the players who are part of the World Cup squad. Otherwise, we would have played other ones,” PTI quoted the India skipper as saying.
On opting to field, SKY added: “We’ve been batting really well when we’ve batted first. So I wanted the guys to take that responsibility if we’re chasing 180 or 200, and two wickets or three wickets are down and see how we bat. So it’s a good challenge. Hopefully, if we get an opportunity again, we might chase again. But at the end of the day, good learning.”
According to New Zealand pacer Matt Henry, his team’s performance demonstrated that it was based on strong character.
“It’s easy after a couple of losses like that to go searching, but I think that shows a lot about the character of this group, to keep competing. That’s what we kind of hang our hat on. I think the key is assessing conditions. Obviously, we’ve played on three really good surfaces lately, small grounds and here was no different.
“Very, very wet conditions as well. So I think for us, it’s actually just about keeping fighting. You’re going to have overs where you can get taken for runs, but as long as you keep believing that you can change it by taking wickets, that’s what stems the flow of runs,” said Henry.
