Despite India’s convincing victory over Zimbabwe on Thursday, which kept the hosts in the running for a semifinal spot in the T20 World Cup in Chennai, captain Suryakumar Yadav was not pleased with the bowling performance.
Indian batsmen improved to score a huge 256/4 at Chepauk following a crushing defeat to South Africa in their Super Eights opening match.
Zimbabwe finished at 184/6 despite never being able to mount a serious run chase attempt, as Shivam Dube, the sixth bowler, gave up as many as 46 runs in his two overs.
“We could have been more clinical with the ball. A win is a win. We will tighten our screws when we play the West Indies. I don’t want to take credit away from Zimbabwe batters, they batted smartly. We could have been little bit smarter with our options,” PTI quoted the India skipper as saying after the match.
India will now take on the West Indies in a virtual quarterfinal at the Eden Gardens on March 1 and the captain discussed the preparations for the crucial match against Zimbabwe.
“I think we wanted to leave everything behind. We didn’t think too much about what we did in the league stage or in the last game in Ahmedabad. Our video analyst had prepared a slide for all the batters and bowlers, highlighting what we’ve done well over the past year.
“We looked at that, took a lot of positivity from it, and came here with clarity. With contributions from the top order right down to number seven, I think there was hardly anything missing in our performance,” he said.
Sikandar Raza, the captain of Zimbabwe, stated that in order to compete with the larger teams, his squad must make changes in every area. Zimbabwe were eliminated from the semifinals race after the defeat.
“A lot of youngsters, most of them are playing their first World Cup, first time ever in India for us. Not that I want to use that as an excuse, but certainly the lessons from the last game, from a batting point of view, I thought we took them really well.
“And you can see how quickly these boys are willing to improve and they showed up today. (on their last game vs South Africa). Certainly the result will take care of itself, but what I’m looking for is definitely a better performance, fielding and bowling,” said Raza.
For the second time in as many games, Zimbabwe gave up more than 250 runs, which significantly contributed to the team’s defeats.
“At the World Cup against the best teams, you need all your three departments to be working hard. And unfortunately, if one lacks, then the game runs away from you. So hopefully in the last game, leave everything on the park and we try and sort out all our three departments and hopefully that gives us the best chance to win the game,” he said.
