T20 World Cup: Jasprit Bumrah explains why R Ashwin wasn’t picked in India’s playing XI against New Zealand

India faced an eight-wicket defeat against New Zealand in their second game of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 in Dubai on Sunday. The humbling defeat came a week after Virat Kohli’s men were decimated by their arch-rivals Pakistan in the opening match.

After being put in to bat, the Men In Blue could only post 110-7 in their stipulated overs. New Zealand chased down the total easily and took just 14.3 overs to do so while losing only a couple of wickets.

Some experts even demanded the inclusion of Ravichandran Ashwin in India’s playing XI as they lost to Pakistan due to the poor show by Ravindra Jadeja and Varun Chakravarthy in that game. The duo failed to impress once again during Sunday’s game, conceding 46 runs from six overs without taking a wicket.

After the match, Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah said that it was very difficult for the team management to include Ashwin because of the presence of dew in the second half of the match.

“See, in hindsight, we could say a lot of things. In hindsight, we would have loved a lot more runs and a lot more wickets. He is an experienced bowler. Obviously, he adds value to the bowling attack whenever he comes. But in hindsight, it’s very difficult,” Bumrah said in the post-match press conference.

“As I said, there’s dew in the second innings so the ball doesn’t grip and the options become very little and rare for the bowlers. You know, the margin of the error goes down. So in hindsight, you might say that ‘OK he might have made a difference’ but it’s too difficult to judge right now.”

While all the other Indian bowlers failed to pick up a wicket, Bumrah was the lone striker in the second innings. The speedster bowled two overs in the powerplay and two in the middle-overs, removing both the Kiwi openers at cost of just 19 runs.

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November 01, 2021 at 06:56PM