T20 World Cup 2021 | India’s T20 WC performance was their poorest in last 4-5 years, says Sourav Ganguly

THe T20 World Cup 2021 turned out to be a disappointing tournamnet for India, as they failed to go past the Super 12s stage despite of being pre-tournament favourites. India have failed to get past the finishing line in the knockout matches in ICC events in last eight years. They were the runner-ups in the 2014 T20 World Cup, 2017 Champions Trophy and the 2021 World Test Championship. They finished semi-finalists in 2015 and 2019 ODI World Cups and in the 2016 T20 World Cup at home.

"To be honest, 2017 2019, I think India was good. 2017 Champions Trophy we lost the final to Pakistan at the Oval, I was a commentator then," he said during the show 'Backstage with Boria'. "Then the 2019 World Cup in England, we were exceptional right throughout, beat everyone and lost to New Zealand in the semi-final - one bad day and the entire good work for two months was just wiped away. [I am] a little disappointed with the way we played this World Cup. I think this has been the poorest of all what I have seen in the last four-five years."

Ganguly opined that India didn’t play with enough freedom in the tournament and that the team was playing only to 15% of their potential. 

"I don't know what's the reason but I just felt they did not play with enough freedom this World Cup. Sometimes it happens in big tournaments, you just get stuck and when I saw them playing against Pakistan and New Zealand - I just felt this was the team which was playing to 15% of its ability. And sometimes you can't just a finger on it that this is the reason why it happened," said the former India captain. 

"Hopefully, they'll learn from it because see, the difference from my generation and this is that there's a world title tournament every year," he said. "The next cycle will have eight tournaments in eight years. So, it will be an opportunity for them to turn things around and hopefully in Australia this team will play a lot better. The talent is without any question, the ability of players is without any question, it's just that I felt the execution in this World Cup wasn't good.”