The Champions Trophy is over and Pakistan are the new champs! Something that no one thought possible before the tournament began. The reasonable expectation was that India might face England in the finals - India reached , but lost.
We lost so bad, that we made less than half the runs that Pakistan made. While there are a lot of theories going on about what India did wrong, lets consider some facts :
1. Pak won all its matches (except the one against India), while chasing. So, it looked like they had figured out how to restrict teams to a low total and with Fakhar Zaman, they had figured out how to chase. India too were successful chasing - so, it made sense for India to chase.
2. The Indian team bowled and fielded badly, but we batted even worse! So, even if India had managed to keep Pak below 300 (a 'gettable' total ), we still wouldn't have won. We made less than half the runs they made.
3. Surprisingly, no India batsman, except Hardhik Pandya and maybe Yuvaraj, could figure out how to play the Pak bowlers. Indian batting wasn't just bad, it was atrocious! So, it is likely that India would have lost even if they had batted first. We couldn't figure out the Pak bowlers and that was that!
Overall, the Champions Trophy turned out to be so boring (despite a 'dream final' between India and Pak), that most likely there will be no CT in 2021! The ICC has at last realized that people would love a World T20 instead of another World Cup clone. And I think that (more than the unpredictable Pak team winning) is the biggest plus point of this Champions Trophy. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of ODIs.
We lost so bad, that we made less than half the runs that Pakistan made. While there are a lot of theories going on about what India did wrong, lets consider some facts :
1. Pak won all its matches (except the one against India), while chasing. So, it looked like they had figured out how to restrict teams to a low total and with Fakhar Zaman, they had figured out how to chase. India too were successful chasing - so, it made sense for India to chase.
2. The Indian team bowled and fielded badly, but we batted even worse! So, even if India had managed to keep Pak below 300 (a 'gettable' total ), we still wouldn't have won. We made less than half the runs they made.
3. Surprisingly, no India batsman, except Hardhik Pandya and maybe Yuvaraj, could figure out how to play the Pak bowlers. Indian batting wasn't just bad, it was atrocious! So, it is likely that India would have lost even if they had batted first. We couldn't figure out the Pak bowlers and that was that!
Overall, the Champions Trophy turned out to be so boring (despite a 'dream final' between India and Pak), that most likely there will be no CT in 2021! The ICC has at last realized that people would love a World T20 instead of another World Cup clone. And I think that (more than the unpredictable Pak team winning) is the biggest plus point of this Champions Trophy. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of ODIs.
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