Mohali: Australia skipper Steven Smith found it hard to accept that one man (Virat Kohli) could push them out of the World Cup. His senior teammate Shane Watson had warned the day before of the danger Kohli could pose if he got going.
A dejected Smith, when asked about the defeat, had to candidly admit: “Pretty serious innings (from Kohli), I thought we were in a pretty good position at one point there. They were needing around two a ball. I thought 160 was about par on that wicket. It took a seriously unbelievable innings under pressure from Kohli to take his team over the line.”
Did the game slip away in the penultimate over from Nathan Coulter-Nile?
“Perhaps he could have taken the pace off a bit more,” Smith said. “He did it for two balls, and Virat didn’t get his bat on both those. Then, he seemed to bowl more on pace and they went to the boundary. Just looked like anything Virat did at that point was going to go to the boundary. It was a serious innings, hats off.”
Smith was also surprised with his dismissal by Yuvraj Singh. “Yeah, didn’t feel like I hit that... but that’s the game of cricket,” he said.
“I was given out. That was the umpire’s call, that’s it. It’s a bit disappointing, but that’s the game of cricket.”
Smith was asked why he did not use Adam Zampa effectively, and he replied: “Just thought at that point that they were just starting to go, and maybe the quicks could do the job, bowling the ball into the wicket like they did in the last game. But it just wasn’t to be. It was the Virat show. He just took over. To get 80 not out of 50 balls, on a wicket that was slow and the ball got a bit soft towards the end, it’s quite special.”
Was Smith satisfied with this team’s batting? “We probably let ourselves down in the middle overs again, that’s one area we haven’t done so well, particularly in these conditions, consistently. That was something we have worked really hard on, but we let ourselves down there and lost a few wickets in clumps. We were not able to get that partnership to get the score a bit above par to 170. It’s disappointing, but all players will learn a lot from this World Cup, playing in these conditions. It’s very valuable, and hopefully we will continue to get better.”
The Aussie skipper added that it also difficult to bat in the middle overs.
“The wicket was sort of slow and the ball got chewed up quickly,” he said. “But although it was quite soft, it didn’t look too soft when Virat was hitting it. It was tough to bat in those middle overs and I thought they timed their run chase pretty well in the end, running lots of twos, hitting to the fielders in the outfield and putting them under pressure. I think that’s where the game turned.”
But despite the defeat, Smith said he does not believe his team were poor.
“I strongly believed in the 15 guys we had here to do the job in these conditions, but we let ourselves down against New Zealand. We probably should have won that game. To lose that by eight (runs) was quite shattering. From there we knew we were chasing our tails in every game we played. In T20s that’s hard sometimes. It’s a fickle game and all it takes is one player going off, like tonight, to turn the course of the game. As I said, the exposure to these conditions and what we have learnt over the last couple of weeks has been a great learning curve. Hopefully, we will keep getting better in these conditions.”
