Team India and Afghanistan Make Early Exit from T20 World Cup 2021.
India’s teams in T20 World Cup 2021 over as Virat Kohli & Co. make group-stage exit.
Virat Kohli-led Team India are out of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 even before they could have taken the field against Namibia for their final Super 12 clash on Monday (November 08). Afghanistan’s eight-wicket loss against New Zealand in Abu Dhabi on Sunday confirmed India’s exit from the tournament.
India’s campaign got off to the worst possible start in this year’s T20 World Cup as the Men in Blue lost to arch-rivals Pakistan by ten wickets before New Zealand handed them an eight-wicket thrashing in the next game. India bounced back and won their next two games on the trot by big margins to ensure they remain alive in the race for a spot in the semis.
India’s elimination from the T20 World Cup was confirmed on Sunday when New Zealand’s victory against Afghanistan took the Black Caps out of their reach and turned their final match of the Super 12s, against Namibia on Monday, into a dead rubber. Their elimination is a massive blow to tournament organisers, with India its largest and most lucrative broadcast market, and as well as the team’s weaknesses it has exposed issues with the World Cup’s format and scheduling.
A full week between games stretched the patience of players who, having gone into the World Cup straight from the Indian Premier League, had by then been living in biosecure bubbles for months. “It’s been a long break for us,” Virat Kohli said before their second match, against New Zealand. “It’s been a lot of time waiting and just doing nothing, really, for us as a team.”
By the second Sunday of the Super 12s the group’s three strongest teams had all played each other, Pakistan winning twice, New Zealand once and India not at all. Though Afghanistan had the potential, ultimately unfulfilled, to upset any of them, the remainder of the matches became a procession. In particular the two teams who qualified from the first group stage, Scotland and Namibia, had realised their ambitions simply by getting that far and, once there, proved hopelessly uncompetitive.
India would of course have been more comfortable if they had hosted the tournament as planned but conditions in the United Arab Emirates are very familiar to players who had all been involved in the IPL, which has been held in the same venues in one and a half of the past two seasons.
But India’s internationals are banned from competing in foreign T20 competitions and, despite hosting the most popular domestic tournament of all, internationally it seemed the game had moved on without them noticing.
Though cricket is the second most popular sport in New Zealand, a country of 5 million people, and the most popular in India, a country of 1.4 billion, the Kiwis have beaten India in the semi-finals of the 2019 50-over World Cup, in the World Test Championship final this year, and have now now eliminated them from the T20 World Cup.
Needing to win their last group game to secure qualification, they limited Afghanistan to 124 for eight, Trent Boult and Adam Milne outstanding with the ball, before comfortably reaching their target with 11 balls and eight wickets to spare. They will now face an injury-depleted England in the first semi-final in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, with Pakistan playing Australia in Dubai a day later.
However, their fate rested in the hands of Afghanistan, who needed to beat New Zealand to keep India alive in the tournament. Afghanistan failed to defend a low-key total of 124 runs in their final Super 12 game on Sunday as they lost by eight wickets.
India will play Namibia in their final Super 12 game on Monday but the game will be of little or no significance as far as the semi-finals are concerned as even a win for India will see them finish third on the points table behind Pakistan and New Zealand.
Abhi