India need to find way to go beyond semis, asserts Sourav Ganguly
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Sourav Ganguly, in no uncertain words, has stated that India have a clear problem in crossing the semis and they need to find a way to tackle the issue. The former Indian skipper further reiterated his point that he made on Twitter that he hated to see players move around so much between formats.
After India’s Champions Trophy win in 2013, the team has failed to win even one World event after. India remained runners up in 2014 T20 World Cup, ended up as the semi-finalist in 2015 ICC World Cup before repeating the same feat next year in the T20 World Cup.
The 2017 Champions Trophy couldn’t change the narrative as India lost to Pakistan in the finals before losing to New Zealand in the semi-finals of 2019 World Cup. Sourav Ganguly is not fond of these statistics as he stated that India need to find a way to go beyond semis.
"We haven't won a global tournament since the 2013 Champions Trophy. We have to find a way to move beyond the last-four stage. Look at what England did in the recent World Cup. Learning from 2015, they transformed themselves into world-beaters,” Ganguly told The Print.
For the West Indies tour, the national selection committee has picked the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, and Ravindra Jadeja in all three formats for the tour, while rising stars Manish Pandey and Shreyas Iyer are in the limited-overs team. While this makes sense, considering modern-day cricket is more about horses for courses now-a-days, and Ganguly is not convinced by that.
"I'm opposed to too many players being moved around. I'm for stability, not a stop-start type of an environment. We don't need cameos only, we need match-winning innings or spells. Learn from Virat, Rohit (Sharma) and (Jasprit) Bumrah... Mohammed Shami too,” Ganguly added.
