ICC World Cup 2019 | We cannot be so critical with one failure, says Sachin Tendulkar
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Sachin Tendulkar has called on Indian cricket fans to be balanced in their criticism of India’s semi-final exit from the 2019 World Cup. While he admitted that it was a bitter pill to swallow, Tendulkar noted that India’s bad day came after winning seven out of eight games in the league stage.
Even as it was confirmed on the big screen that Martin Guptill’s direct hit from the deep had caught MS Dhoni inches short of the line, all of India’s 1.35 billion people were still unwilling to give up their dream of winning the World Cup. Quite understandably, over the next few hours, social media platforms were flooded by the expressions of those heartbreaks. Tendulkar, a World Cup semi-finalist and runner-up in 1996 and 2003 respectively, called for some calm.
"We cannot be so critical with one failure. We cannot forget that we won 7 out of 8 games. I'm not for it. Yes all the teams have bad games, England also lost. They lost to Sri Lanka. We can't be harsh on our team, it is a disappointing day but it's a bitter pill to swallow," Tendulkar told IndiaToday.
Analysing the Indian run-chase, the batting legend said that the team would’ve taken 240 to win any day. However, the early loss of wickets meant that the rest of the innings was spent in playing catch up.
"There were high percentage of dot balls, we had to do that because we kept losing wickets. We kept playing that catching up game, we were never ahead of them. That happened because we didn't have wickets in hand," Tendulkar said.
Losing Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul cheaply felt like all of India’s worst nightmares had come true at once. 69% of India’s runs in the World Cup have been scored by the top order, which isn’t a bad stat taken in isolation. However, combining that stat with the uncertainty of the middle order reveals exactly what India’s Achilles’ heel in the tournament was. Tendulkar expressed his disappointment that the heroics of Sharma, Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah went in vain.
"The team relied so much on his (Sharma’s) performance throughout, Virat also. But I feel the rest should have chipped in more. It cannot be just 2 or 3 players doing the job for you all the time," Tendulkar added.
