T20 World Cup 2022: Indian openers disappoint but Rohit thinks otherwise: Where did India lose the semi-final?

India were handed a humiliating ten-wicket defeat by England in the T20 World Cup semi-final at the Adelaide Oval. Chasing 169, England steamrolled India with 24 balls left to spare, as Alex Hales and Jos Buttler dominated India’s bowlers from the beginning till the end. India just didn’t turn up with the ball was Rohit Sharma’s response to Harsha Bhogle’s question on what went wrong in the game. 

“I thought we still batted pretty well at the back end to get to that score, but we weren’t good enough with the ball,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation. “It was definitely not a wicket where a team could come and chase down [that target] in 16-17 overs. But yeah, these things happen. Like I said, with the ball we just didn’t turn up today.”

Read More: T20 World Cup 2022: Twitter reacts as England annihilates India in the Semi-Finals

Where did India lose the game?

The bowling certainly didn’t live up to the expectations but India probably lost the game in the 1st phase of the match, They got off to a poor start losing ‘KL Rahul (5 of 5 balls) and Rohit Sharma (27 of 28 balls)’ early on which led to a rebuilding phase where they ended up scoring on 38 runs in the powerplay, The men in blue crawled their way to 62 in the first 10 overs, this cost them a good 20-25 runs in the eventual score. Had India reached 185-190 in the first innings it would have been a different ball altogether. The Indian openers have had a terrible tournament, they have one of the least averages compared to all the other top teams.

The Indian bowlers have had a decent tournament, Arshdeep has taken 10 wickets in total in the tournament and delivered at crucial junctures, Bhuvneshwar’s economy has been brilliant throughout the tournament, the problem has been in the opening pair and Rohit Sharma in particular has had a poor World Cup. Rohit’s strike rate in today’s game was 96.34. The openers dictate the terms in T20 cricket and in a team where the openers don’t click, puts the unit on the back foot straight away leading them to play catch-up cricket.