In a tight T20 World Cup match last week at The Gabba in Brisbane, India was defeated by South Africa by five wickets. In addition to the Proteas’ great bowling and David Miller and Aiden Markram’s brilliant batting, the Indian team’s subpar fielding was a major factor in the match’s outcome favouring South Africa. While India’s captain Rohit Sharma lost an easy run out opportunity against the same batsman later in the game, Markram survived as Virat Kohli dropped a sitter at deep mid-wicket.
According to former India captain Kapil Dev, a team cannot succeed in winning a game if its members blow such opportunities. “If you miss run out chances and catches in T20 cricket then you could not win. When you are defending a low total, your enthusiasm should increase to 100 per cent,” Kapil said on ABP News. Kapil acknowledged that any player could misfield, but added that such incidents have an effect on the team’s overall energy.
“Such small mistakes should not happen. I can understand, every player drops catches, but when the match comes in such a situation and you drop such a catch, it somewhere lets the team down. “For the run-out, I won’t say all the three wickets (stumps) were completely visible. I would say 70 to 75 per cent wickets (stumps) were visible from 6 yards… You can say that those were the two important aspects that could have changed the game,” said the former India skipper.