India’s superstar cricketers were pummelled as New Zealand registered an easy eight-wicket victory in the ICC T20 World Cup here.
The defeat not only puts India in serious danger of losing out on a semifinal berth, but also raises questions about outgoing Virat Kohli’s abject failure to win an ICC tournament in four attempts as captain.
While Kohli is set to step down from T20 captaincy, this defeat puts his ODI leadership future also in doubt. The encounter against New Zealand was embarrassing as a meagre target of 111 was chased down by Daryl Mitchell (49 off 35 balls) and skipper Kane Williamson (33 not out off 31 balls) in only 14.3 overs.
Earlier, India managed 110/7 in 20 overs in which they didn’t effectively score runs in nine of those overs (54 dot balls). Worse, they were just able to hit a single boundary between overs 8 and 15 when two spinners were in attack.
Just like the Pakistan game, the spinners—left-arm orthodox Mitchell Santner (4-0-15-0) and leg-spinner Ish Sodhi (4-0-17-2) — caught India by the scruff of their necks, giving away only 32 runs in eight overs.
