India's Asia Cup Super 4 clash against arch-rivals Pakistan, ended with the Babar-Azam side walking away with a five-wicket win on Sunday, at the Dubai International Stadium. Despite losing the game, Team India had many positives from the game like return of Virat Kohli's vintage form, as he smashed 60 runs off 44 balls and a fiery partnership between the openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul. However, former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar feels that the problem is not with the Indian batting line-up as it is quite deep and it was just a case of lower-order not contributing much with the bat.
“I don't think the tail is too long because when you look at the batting ability of the team that played in the last game on paper, for example, if you line them down, you had somebody like a Deepak Hooda at 7. So that's plenty of batting. So, I don't think that was an issue. It was one of those things when you have this high-risk approach on the odd occasion, what will happen is that wickets will fall at the worst possible time," Manjrekar said on SPORTS18's daily sports news show ‘SPORTS OVER THE TOP'.
"Suryakumar Yadav just got himself out, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul. So, it's one of those things. But India still ended up getting 180. I thought they could have gotten 210-220 if there was more contribution from the lower half. Interestingly, in the first 10 overs, India got 93 and in the next 10, they got 88. But it's one of the occupational hazards of this approach. But not because the tail is too long," he added.
Coming to the match, India was sent into bat and the side posted 181/7 in 20 overs. Virat Kohli top-scored with a knock of 60 off 44 balls. Openers KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma provided a solid start with the bat, but the middle and lower order did not score much.
Chasing 182, wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan top-scored for Pakistan as he played a knock of 71 of 51 balls. However, the impact innings came from Mohammad Nawaz who went out to bat at No.4 and the left-hander went on to score 42 runs off 20 balls.
For India, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya, Ravi Bishnoi, Yuzvendra Chahal and Arshdeep Singh scalped one wicket each.
India will be taking on Sri Lanka in a crucial Asia Cup Super 4 encounter on Tuesday at the same venue.