T20 World Cup: T20 cricket is all slam and bang. One of the shortest format’s premier players Liam Livingstone recently stated that “there is no time for blocks in T20 cricket,” and that is how he plays this fast-paced shortest international form of the game.
Indians, though, haven’t had the most aggressive players until recent years. The Indian management has always considered T20 as a shorter form of ODI cricket – their first want to settle in, get their eye in, and then tee off in the death overs.
While this has worked well for them more often than not, on some occasions, even the best of Indian batters have found themselves struggling and played a match-losing knock for their poor strike in long-ish innings.
Here are the three slowest knocks by Indian players in the T20 World Cup (minimum of 20 balls faced in the innings):
MS Dhoni – 11 runs from 23 balls vs West Indies, 2009
Former India captain MS Dhoni played the slowest – with the worst strike rate – innings by an Indian in a T20 World Cup match (for at least 20 balls) against the West Indies at the scenic Lord’s during the 2009 T20 World Cup and cost India the game, and potentially a place in the semi-final.
MS Dhoni’s boundaryless knock of 23-ball 11 runs, an abysmal strike rate of 47 in T20 cricket, meant India could manage only a par total of 153 despite Yusuf Pathan and Harbhajan Singh’s late impetus; WI chased down the target inside 19 overs.
Ravichandran Ashwin – 10 runs from 20 balls vs New Zealand, 2016
The opening match of the 2016 T20 World Cup proved to be a disastrous one for Ravichandran Ashwin and for India. He was tonked for a first-ball six by Martin Guptill and conceded 32 runs in his 4 overs (8 rpo) in a game where NZ managed only 126 runs (6.3 rpo) and even then India fell short by a shocking 47 runs on a slow, turning, gripping pitch.
When Ashwin’s batting came, he had to lend support to MS Dhoni at the other end. However, his failure to rotate the strike further piled up pressure on Dhoni as Ashwin could score only 10 runs off 20 balls without hitting any boundary.
Yuvraj Singh – 11 runs from 21 balls vs Sri Lanka, 2014
This is one of the most painful innings that resulted in a loss. Virat Kohli was in dream form in the 2014 T20 World Cup, and in the final vs Sri Lanka, he would have taken India to a more solid total than the 130 they managed but for Yuvraj Singh’s disastrous struggle of 11 runs from 21 balls (strike rate 52).
Forget about fours or sixes, Yuvraj couldn’t even middle most of his balls; the ones he did hit went straight to the fielders. He came to bat in the 11th over and was dismissed in the 19th, providing a little relief for Indian fans. When your own fans are happy to see your dismissal – even for the great Yuvraj Singh – you know the innings was atrocious.
