Everyone, yes e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e, has gone through a period where nothing seems to go their way. This Indian team just had one of those days for the second match in a row. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong – and in the list, I am not including the toss following which we had to bat first, neither do I believe that had we chased, we could have ended up on the other side; simply because I see no point in stressing over the could-haves.

India went in with two changes in the playing eleven, with Kishan / Thakur replacing Surya / Bhuvi. Well, one of them was a forced change, while the other one, not as much. Then came the baffling decision of not sending Rohit to open alongside Kishan. Not that it mattered since he made it to the middle in the third over itself, but over the course of the match and looking back now, there have been several decisions that blew my mind. I know it’s a very cliched term but ‘controlling the controllables’ on the cricket field almost guarantees that you are not disappointed at the end of the game. While we tried, we didn’t manage to do it as well as one would have imagined. 61 dot balls and only 2 hits over the ropes in 20 overs – pretty much tells you the story of how we went about putting up a total on the board. Yes, the Kiwis did keep it tight but the staggering amount of dot balls faced meant that there was constant pressure and the run-flow was always kept under check.

Indian bowlers tried their best to take the game as deep as they possibly could, but defending 110 was never going to be easy, especially if you don’t take early wickets. Another shocker for me was Kohli giving Varun as many as three overs inside the first six. He bowled most of his deliveries short of length revealing the ‘mystery’ a tad bit earlier. Bumrah was the pick of the bowlers for me and our best wicket-taking option that night. Kiwis made the run chase look rather simple, scoring freely, never allowing the pressure to get to them – not that there was any, but low-scoring games do tend to get interesting sometimes.

If the performances of the previous two games are anything to go by, it seems to me that in the middle of the tournament, the search for the right combination is still on. But to be honest, this is a quality side in its own right. Remember, it’s the same set of players that had comprehensively beaten the likes of England and Australia in the two warm-up games that preceded the Super 12’s. The collective failure of the batting unit has pushed us back in the game considering we were batting first on both the occasions, versus Pakistan and NZ. While a place in the semis now seems a bit far-fetched, it is not over as yet.