Published: Jun 11, 2024, 11:03 AM (IST)
Edited: Jun 11, 2024, 11:03 AM (IST)
There were few positives to advocate as Pakistan suffered a second successive defeat of their T20 World Cup 2024 campaign, going down to India by 6 runs on Sunday. The result puts Pakistan’s Super 8 qualification chances in serious jeopardy, and the team’s head coach Gary Kirsten admitted that the players put more pressure on themselves than they should have which contributed to Pakistan choking under pressure.
Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant were the star performers for India as Pant’s knock of 42 was crucial for India to reach the score of 119 and Bumrah took 3 very important wickets to break Pakistan’s backbone and restrict them to 113/7 in 20 overs.
Speaking about his team’s performance in the post-match press conference, Kirsten said, “Pretty much spot-on (about players putting excessive pressure on themselves). These guys are all international players and they are aware that when they are not performing at their best there is going to be pressure put on them. That is understandable, but a lot of these guys have played a lot of T20 cricket around the world over many, many years and it is really up to them to decide how they are going to take their games forward.”
Kirsten said that the message to the team while chasing was to look for an odd boundary, punish the loose deliveries and rotate the strike well.
The coach also gave his remarks on the loss, “Disappointing loss, that’s for sure. I knew 120 was not going to be an easy target. If India got only 120, it was always going to be not the easiest. But I think we had the game at 72 for 2 with six or seven overs left. Disappointing not to get across the line from the position we got ourselves into.”
The former South African cricketer also questioned the team’s decision-making and said that such mistakes at international level are unacceptable.
“Maybe not so great decision making. You have got the game on, run a ball, eight wickets in hand, decision-making at that point. That’s the game. That’s international cricket for you. You make mistakes like that, you are going to pay. I thought we made some poor decisions at important phases of the game. I thought Rizwan played well for us. We knew it was going to be a tough wicket to bat on. We managed the chase very well but then just let it slip in the end,” said Kirsten.
