Former Indian batter Mohammad Kaif slammed India’s team management after the hosts suffered a 24-run loss against the West Indies at Hyderabad on Wednesday. Kaif reckons India will never win the World Cup if they continue to back the same playing combination.
The former UP batter said India’s think tank should stop preferring batting all-rounders ahead of specialist bowlers. The current team management has always given more weightage to batting depth because of the team’s aggressive approach.
India is backing all-rounders like Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Naman Dhir ahead of Kuldeep Yadav and the same is not helping them with the ball.
West Indies posted a par score of 247 runs on the board at Hyderabad after Shai Hope scored another fine century to continue his rich form. All the Indian bowlers, barring Prince Yadav, conceded their runs at an economy rate of more than 11.
“The truth here as to why the Indian team lost is because of their bowling. The blame should go to them. 247 is a lot of runs. We lost because we bowled badly. There were too many runs on the board. Also, this is not happening for the first time. What happens in a five-match series is that usually batters win you three games, and bowlers win you the other matches. Here, bowlers are not winning you games at all. You will never win the World Cup with this combination,” Mohammad Kaif said on Cricbuzz.
On the other hand, Indian captain Shreyas Iyer admitted they could not execute their plans with the ball.
“It all started with bowling. I think we didn’t execute our line lengths well and see at the end of the day, chasing 250, you have to go in a certain pattern when you’re coming and chasing. So I like the approach when we were chasing, but we were unfortunate we couldn’t execute our plans in bowling, and that’s where we fell a bit short,” Shreyas Iyer said during the post-match presentation.
The fifth and final match of the series between India and the West Indies will be played at M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru, on Saturday.
