Bangladesh registered their first victory in the T20I match against India. The team is touring without some of their experienced players yet they easily won the first match in the T20I series. The win of visitors has raised the question of the strategy of the Indian team. Sunil Gavaskar shares with Sports Tak on how India can get the top rank in the shortest format.
Team should learn from Delhi mistakes: Sunil Gavaskar
The first T20I match of the series was played in Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. Bangladesh opted to bowl as they won the toss. The Indian team was given the challenging task to bat first. Bangladesh’s strategy to build up the pressure was successful as India lost early wickets. Sunil Gavaskar opined that India played the most number of dot balls in Delhi and should learn from their mistakes.
“We need to learn from the Delhi loss. You can’t just forget this. We have seen that whenever the team bats first they play a lot more dot balls as compared to when they’re chasing. In Delhi, I think there were 55 dot balls in the 1st innings, which in my opinion is too much,” said Gavaskar.
Win more matches to improve the ranking
Before the start of the T20I series against Bangladesh, Rohit Sharma opined that the team has the target to improve its ranking in T20I. Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar said that it would be not possible until India wins a big number of matches.
“In ICC rankings India is at 5. If they are to go to 2/3, they will have to win some big matches. And if they can’t do this, it will not be easy for them to win the (T20) World Cup,” warned Gavaskar.
India set the target of 149 runs (148/6). Rohit Sharma lost its wicket early; Shikhar Dhawan was also not impressive as he scored 41 runs in 42 balls.
Bangladesh’s young players easily chased down the target. Mushfiqur Rahim scored unbeaten 60 runs off 43 balls; Soumya Sarkar scored 39 runs and set a good partnership with Naim who scored 26 runs out of 28 balls. Indian bowlers were not able to break the partnership early which led the visitors to reach the target easily.