"Wanted To Challenge Ourselves": Suryakumar Yadav's Blunt Take On Surprising Tactic vs New Zealand
With the series in their pocket, India imploded at Visakhapatnam as fine spells from Mitchell Santner, Jacob Duffy, and Ish Sodhi gave the Kiwis a consolation win by 50 runs.
India captain Suryakumar Yadav said they played a batter short on purpose to test themselves in the fourth T20 against New Zealand on Wednesday. Having already sealed the five-match series, India experimented by fielding six specialist batters including Hardik Pandya who did not bowl on the day. Harshit Rana was India's seven while usually the team keeps batting till number eight. The move did not work as India lost the game by 50 runs. "We purposely played six batters today. We wanted to have five perfect bowlers and wanted to challenge ourselves. Like for example, if we're chasing 200 or 180, and we wanted to see if we were two down or three down, how does it look? But then it's fine at the end of the day," said the India skipper.
"And we wanted to play all the players who are part of the World Cup squad. Otherwise, we would have played other ones."
On opting to field, he added: "We've been batting really well when we've batted first. So I wanted the guys to take that responsibility if we're chasing 180 or 200, and two wickets or three wickets are down and see how we bat. So it's a good challenge. Hopefully, if we get an opportunity again, we might chase again. But at the end of the day, good learning." New Zealand pacer Matt Henry said his team's performance showed that it was built on strong character.
"It's easy after a couple of losses like that to go searching, but I think that shows a lot about the character of this group, to keep competing. That's what we kind of hang our hat on. I think the key is assessing conditions. Obviously, we've played on three really good surfaces lately, small grounds and here was no different.
"Very, very wet conditions as well. So I think for us, it's actually just about keeping fighting. You're going to have overs where you can get taken for runs, but as long as you keep believing that you can change it by taking wickets, that's what stems the flow of runs," said Henry.
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India Cricket Team
New Zealand Cricket Team