Despite posting a huge total of 190 runs on the board, team India lost the one-off T20I against Windies to let the hosts have the last laugh in the series. A lone effort of 125* runs from Evin Lewis blew away a combined efforts from Indian batsmen, which saw Windies cruising to a win with nine wickets and the same number of balls remaining in the contest. Though Lewis scored a century in the game it was the Indian fielders who allowed the left-handed batsman to score yet another century against India.
The first chance was dropped when Lewis was on a score of 46 whereas the second chance came soon in the very next over and this time it was Dinesh Karthik – who wasted the opportunity. On the first occasion, the ball went high in the sky and two fielders were behind it viz Virat Kohli and Mohammed Shami. Utter confusion between the two saw the chance going down and Lewis heaved a sigh of relief.
On the second occasion, the chance was an easy one but Dinesh Karthik made a mockery of it by misjudging the ball, that again went down and touched the ground. It was an easy chance and post that, Lewis went onto to make most out of these bungles by the Indian team, to punish their bowlers later.
The dropped catches are to be blamed for this loss, a fact which Dinesh Karthik mentioned in the post-match press conference,
“If mis-hits go for sixes then you know it is his day but he gave us two chances, we couldn’t hold on to them. Those were costly opportunities and in T20 games every opportunity would cost you a lot. We could see the result went their way mostly because of dropped chances,” said Karthik.
“I am pretty confident of taking high catches in fielding. It is just that I came running in and the breeze took it away slightly more than I thought and from the corner of my eyes I saw Virat running in as well. I didn’t want to bump into him and that took a fraction of a second for me which made me run more than I should and that kind of didn’t get me in a good position and that’s is the reason I dropped the catch. All said and done, 190 is a good score. On any given day most teams will take 190. But the way the guy played, he hit more sixes than fours. It doesn’t happen too many times that you end up hitting twice the number of sixes than boundaries,” he added.
Along with the dropped chances, Indian senior batsmen are to be blamed as well. Though Rishabh Pant took his time to reach the top gear but seniors like MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav had the responsibility to be there at the crease and ensure that the team post a score in excess of 200. Any score around 230 would have done the work for India but once again, the visiting side bowed down in front of Windies in the shortest format of the game.