Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: As defending champions India prepare to face England in the T20 World Cup semi-final at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, bowling coach Morne Morkel says dew could play a big role.He explained that conditions at Wankhede can be tricky. “I think dew is always a big concern. But that’s again something you can’t control: the toss. I think at Wankhede there’s always that extra bit of bounce. Guys can trust the bounce and lead through the line that can also, as a bowler, bring you into the game. I just felt or feel that the margins here are a lot smaller. The ball travels; it’s quite a small ground,” Morne Morkel told the reporters.
He added that bowlers must stay brave despite the risks. “So you just need to be really fighting that over, staying in the moment and competing for every ball. Because, as I said, a batter’s strength can also be his weakness on the surface. So it’s sometimes not to go too defensive and keep on attacking because opportunities can come,” he added.Head coach Gautam Gambhir also spoke about how the lack of dew during this tournament has affected India’s batting compared to earlier bilateral series. “During the bilateral series as well, there was a lot of dew in the second innings as well, but we did not see a lot of dew during this World Cup campaign. So I felt that it was not only about the strike rate, but it was about reading the game properly and obviously reading the situation as well. And that is something that is going to be important, and the guys did that really well,” Gambhir said.“Even today, you saw they were chasing 195. We never felt that we were out of the game. Never ever did we feel in 20 overs that the chase was away from us. So the guys kept in control. Yes, there were times in bilateral matches where we could chase the target in 16 or 17 overs, but this is the World Cup. And the pressure is different, and the quality is different as well.”India reached the semi-finals after wins over Zimbabwe and West Indies, despite a setback against South Africa in the Super Eights.
