sussexpob wrote:India never attacked the rate consistently.... they did so for 3 overs before Dhawan got out, and even at 15 per over required, took singles. You cant play like they did past over 10 to 30 and win matches, even in this T20, 100 runs from last ten overs day.
8 an over or 9 an over can be chased in a pure T20, probably fairly regularly, but wickets down and extending that to an extra 5-10 overs is asking way too much. India batted themselves in a hole through the innings.
That style of batting leads to a loss all the time. Throwing it earlier and losing a few wickets might lose you a game 10 overs before, but it is also the only way you can win. Apart from Dhawan, who played the correct type of innings, others just came in and got out to poor dismissals after putting pressure on themselves.
Agreed, it was a very odd chase. The openers set the platform nicely but the cluster of those 4 wickets meant that Rahane and Dhoni had to play too carefully to rebuild and left themselves with too much to do. It is astonishing that between them Rahane and Dhoni faced 133 balls and hit just 7 boundaries. I kept on expecting Dhoni to go for it, but even in the 40-42 overs with the RRR approaching 15 he seemed content to milk the singles. And the run-out was bizarre - it looked as it he gave up. No dive? In a World Cup semi? I think he gave up.
It was clearly a harder pitch to bat on than it looked, as on the Australian side Smith was amazing, but everyone else struggled to get going (apart from Johnson at the end, I suppose). And Australia did bowl well. But it is odd that India didn't go down swinging.
Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:47 pm