New Zealand beat India by 8 wickets in their second match of the T20 World Cup on Sunday. Bowling first, New Zealand restricted India at 110 runs with superb bowling performances by Trent Boult and Ish Sodhi.
“To be brutal upfront, I don’t think we were brave enough with bat/ball. We obviously didn’t have much to play with the ball. We were just not brave enough in our body language when we entered the field and NZ had better intensity, body language. Every time we took a chance, we lost a wicket. It’s most often a result of hesitation of whether you should go for a shot or not. When you play for India, there are loads of expectations. We are watched, people come to the stadium and everyone who plays for India needs to embrace that and cope with it. We haven’t done that in these two games, and that’s why we haven’t won. We have to be optimistic and positive and take calculated risks. We have to disconnect from the pressure and continue with our process, and play a positive brand of cricket. There’s a lot of cricket to play in the tournament,” said Virat Kohli after match.
Ish Sodhi was player of match for his splendid show with the ball where he returned with the figures of 2/17. Sodhi sad that the wicket was slower than the last match that helped the spinners.
“The pitch was certainly slower than we saw (the ENG-AUS game). Bit of grass cover but it played slower than expected. Main tactic was bowling first. Teams have had success here bowling first, so the toss was based on that opinion,” said Ish Sodhi after the mid-innings. “Didn’t turn hell of a lot but it does when you bowl a touch slow. Tough to catch under the lights here, unfortunate with those two drops. If you had asked before the start of the game, if you had told us we could restrict them to under 120, we will certainly take it,” he added.
Trent Boult scalped three wickets while Sodhi returned with two for New Zealand. For the Men in Blue, Ravindra Jadeja and Hardik Pandya played the innings of 26* and 23 as no Indian batter crossed the 30-runs mark.
India have now lost two games and in order to make a final four finish they need to play all their remaining games like virtual knock outs.
