Former Indian cricketer and commentator Aakash Chopra has slammed the Indian team’s bowling performance after they suffered a 24-run loss to the West Indies in the fourth T20I in Hyderabad.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, Chopra termed India’s bowling as ordinary and pointed out how the West Indies used variations to trouble the Indian batters during the second innings as the five-match series is currently levelled 2-2.
“The bowling was ordinary. It seemed like the pitch was flat when the Indian team was bowling. It seemed like something started happening on the pitch when India came to bat because the West Indies bowled a lot of into-the-pitch slower ones, which we didn’t do. We bowled only around nine slower ones, which was not right. We were also serving full tosses. Our bowling was actually quite ordinary, and the West Indies made the most of it, thrashed us a lot, and reached close to 250,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
It’s important to note that Prince Yadav was India’s most economical bowler while Arshdeep Singh and Axar Patel gave away 52 runs and 45 runs, respectively. Further, Chopra reckoned that Keemo Paul’s spell changed the game upside down for India.
“If nearly 250 are scored, they aren’t chased easily, although the West Indies did that job in Ranchi, but there was a lot of dew there. Sanju started destroying at the start here. Sanju likes this ground a lot. He had once hit five sixes in a Rishad Hossain over. He had scored a hundred then,” he said.
“Here also, when he scored a fifty, he was hitting so much that Abhishek Sharma was standing at the other end and asking Sanju to let him bat. Sanju batted incredibly well. He got out, and Ishan Kishan got out soon after that. Even after that, whether it was Tilak Varma or Nitish Kumar Reddy, or Abhishek Sharma’s short knock, it seemed like we might come back into the game, but Keemo Paul’s five wickets changed the game,” Chopra concluded.
