India’s performance in Champions Trophy
India had one win, one wash out and one loss and they are out of the Champions Trophy. They started the tournament with the No.1 ranking but have ended up with a messy performance. Against Pakistan, neither batting nor bowling was excellent. Australia were well on their way to post a target close to 300 when skies started pouring. The performance was good against West Indies. It happened when the game between Pakistan and Australia was goint on. India would have had a good chance if only Australia hadn’t shown a nail-biting last ball victory.
Has India performed better in the tournament? Dhoni said “It is tough for me to decide if we were good in the tournament because we were off the boil only in one game. Even when we were chasing 300-odd runs against Pakistan if we had capitalised on the start we got, we could have won the game. That was our off game. The second game was washed out and the third one we won. It is really difficult to say if this performance was bad. I was much more disappointed about the World T20 performance as we were really off the mark.”
Dhoni also added that the team missed bowling all-rounder who can contribute with bat and even ball at the time of need. “One of the reasons the Australian side is good is because they can play up to six specialist bowlers and they can all bat. If you look at Mitchell Johnson and Brett Lee, they can all bat and contribute a bit. I have always said we need to find a seam up bowler who can contribute with the bat because it always gives you the option of playing two spinners. At times, when you play five bowlers and six batsmen it is a worry because in day and night games chasing can become a problem if you lose early wickets. In this tournament we were forced to play with five bowlers and not all of them could bat.”
Tags: Australia, Brett Lee, ICC Champions Trophy 2009, India, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mitchell Johnson
