Colombo: Indian team registered a one run victory over South Africa in the final Super Eight match but the victory was not enough to take MS Dhoni’s men into the semifinals of the ICC T20 World Cup because of poor run-rate. Both Pakistan and Australia were on four points but they progressed to the semis as they had better run-rate then the Indians.

India after scoring 152 runs needed to stop South Africa below 122 but that didn’t happen. Indian captain at the post match presentation ceremony said that he is not overly disappointed because his team played well and were a bit unfortunate.

“We are a bit disappointed, we played well in the last three matches, against Australia it was the rain that cost us the match. We performed brilliantly in the other matches; we don’t have control over other teams and their results. We won four out of five matches and overall I am quite happy,” Dhoni said.

On the things that did not work out for Indian team Dhoni said, “I think we could have scored 10-15 runs more in one or two games. We lost early wickets and that affected our game plan, we depend heavily on the starts because our batsmen can hit some big shots from the 15-20 over mark.”

On Dhoni saving Ashwin in the initial overs, he said, “I felt we had a good chance attacking with the fast bowlers, the wicket was not spinning much, we were trying to stop them to go past 121 mark but when that didn’t happen we wanted to win.”

This is India’s third consecutive T20 World Cup where they have not got beyond the Super Eight stage, on that Dhoni said, “I think the problem is that we have not clicked as a team. We have to do well in all three areas in bowling, batting and fielding. It is a format that one off day can see you out of the tournament.”

South African captain AB de Villiers after the match said, “We would like to apologize to the people back home. We just didn’t click as a team. All the players including me did not perform up to the mark and we know that we let the country down.” 

By Indian Sports News Network