Since their last defeat in an ICC white-ball tournament, India had won 17 straight games and two championships. But sport has a long memory and a cruel sense of geography, and when they returned to the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad for their Super Eights opener against South Africa, they found the past waiting for them. Their batting, the engine of everything that had followed in those 826 days, came apart at the seams.
Asked to chase for the first time in this T20 World Cup, India folded meekly against the might of South Africa’s bowling, falling 76 short of the 187-run target – their biggest defeat (by runs) in T20 World Cups. The failings seemed choreographed, almost uncomfortably so. A left-handed opener fell for a duck to an off-spinner in the first over, except this time it was Ishan Kishan undone by Aiden Markram.
Abhishek Sharma, watching from the non-striker’s end, got off the mark for the tournament but couldn’t find his footing, playing and missing repeatedly before holing out. Between those two dismissals, a third southpaw, Tilak Varma, charged down the track and nicked off, burning a review on his way back.–Cricbuzz
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