Naseer Hussain on India’s Performance Against Bangladesh

Naseer Hussain on India’s Performance Against Bangladesh

I thought they were excellent, actually. 257 was way below par. When I looked at the pitch and watched the way that first thing went, I thought it was a 350 pitch. It was flat, it came on, it swung a little bit early on for Siraj and Bumrah, but I thought they came back well. I thought Siraj came back well, and Bumrah was brilliant in all phases.

It’s Jadeja Kuldeep, the captaincy of Rohit. Once Hardik got injured, the way he rotated his bowlers, bowled at the right phase, and the fielding, KL Grohls catch down the left side and Jadeja diving the back foot point.

I thought it was almost a perfect performance after the Hardik Pandya injury. I have thought for a long time he’s one of the best whiteball backers there has ever been. You know, his record, he’s up there with the best, he’s done it in World Cups.

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His record against Bangladesh is magnificent. His pool shot, at one stage we showed a graphic, he was up to 400 in the pool shot in the last couple of years. He got out to it in the end, but not before he’d done a lot of damage. The most important thing I like is intent.

There is real intent. You know, for a while they played a bit of timid cricket in the T20 in Australia, and they lost to England in Adelaide in that semi-final. This looks like a different top three.

The way Rohit, Shubman, and Virat are playing, they’re going to put a lot of top-order bowlers under pressure. It’s just the way when you lose a bowler, the way you have to think about bowlers at key moments in the game.

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Kuldeep bowled really well, was bowling well, but he realized Siraj in the last year or so, the way Siraj has come back with those cross-seam deliveries, and then he went to Siraj, Siraj got the wicket, and then he went back to Kuldeep, and to Deja, Bumrah.

He just rotated his bowlers. And as Dinesh Karthik said on commentary, it wasn’t just the rotation, he was always rotating, looking to get a wicket. It’s a bit like his batting, where it’s the attacking option, same with his captaincy.

I think he’ll play the situation. He always plays the situation. That’s why he’s brilliant in run chases. If he sees the situation out there in front of him, he won’t be much off the strike rate anyway, because he never takes up deliveries, chews up deliveries.

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On a pitch like this, if he wanted to go into another gear, if he was chasing 350, he totally would have gone into another gear. He was just making sure India got over the line, as he often does.