South Africa players celebrate the wicket of India’s Washington Sundar during the T20 World Cup cricket match in Ahmedabad. (AP) TimesofIndia.com in Ahmedabad: “We’ve watched other games and it’s been nice to have both left-handers with the ball spinning away. It gives you a bit of an option where if he doesn’t spin he can go straight through the wicket or if he kind of holds it, it gives you hope that we can get a wicket in the first over.”There was a slight chuckle in the press conference room when David Miller was asked about the plan to start Aiden Markram. The South African batsman’s response was what most reporters had heard earlier in the same hall when Dutchman Bas de Leede answered a similar query. South Africa took a cue from the Netherlands, who had to be encouraged as the match against Pakistan unfolded. The arch-rivals would surely be encouraged by the way Namibia’s Gerhard Erasmus bowled in the Delhi match.
Why India is in deep trouble | T20 World Cup 2026 | India vs South Africa
Different places, different teams, but the approach was simple. Bring in the off-spinner early and wait for the Indian batters to go wrong. And they did. Part-time bowling from Salman Agha and Markram secured the first wickets in their respective matches, and Erasmus applied a middle-overs choke, especially with a number of left-handers. Netherlands Aryan Dutt stuck to his basics and removed Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma in the over. Obsessed with head-to-head combat, India was way off the mark in tactical battles.From poor shot selection and lack of game awareness to no plan B, the T20I World Cup has been a very bumpy ride without careful manoeuvring. There was palpable panic in the country when Miller and Dewald Brevis put South Africa back on track from 20/3 and their calculated removal of Varun Chakravarthy came as a rude shock to the think tank. There was no one to use this choke from the other end as the only bowler, Axar Patel, who was able to do so with his sharp game awareness and ability to deliver under pressure, warmed the bench.
Washington Sundar plays a shot during the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 cricket match between India and South Africa. (PTI)
Washington Sundar, still an unproven commodity in the shortest format, was preferred because of the left-handers in the opposition camp. However, with two of them – Quinton de Kock and Ryan Rickelton – dismissed early, India’s lack of a Plan B was exposed and Miller-Brevis were in a mood to take advantage. The defense mechanism regarding Washington over Axar was on full display in the postgame presser, but it lacked the conviction and logic everyone was looking for.“We’ve spent so much time thinking about the XI, the last couple of days. And I think the only way it didn’t play into our hands is if we had a perfect start like today, when we got Quinton and Rickelton out so early. We kind of looked at the games more in the middle. And then of course someone has to back off. So – we leave another bowl behind, does it look like the batter is behind? “But obviously, when we were playing it forward at the time and making the decision, we felt we needed Rinka, as an eighth baseman, so to speak. And the decision was based on that. But it’s certainly nothing to take away from Axar and his leadership and how important he is to the team. But look, we’re struggling almost every week to try to squeeze 11 spots into 15 games,” assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said.
David Miller and Dewald Brevis put on a 97-run partnership during the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 Super 8 Group 1 match against India. (OR)
India made the selection of the Playing XI more complicated than necessary and skipper Suryakumar Yadav was not proactive enough to regain control while Miller and Brevis scored freely. Any bowler can have an off day and Varun did. However, handing the bonus to Arshdeep Singh during the over — a desperate move to get another wicket — was unlikely to work as both he and Jasprit Bumrah were forced to bowl their remaining overs.Had there been more cushions for the slips, one Bumrah could have made the difference in the mid-overs as the local boy was in a different mood at the Narendra Modi Stadium. His spell of 3/15 was the only reason South Africa failed to cross the 200-run mark. However, 187 proved to be far more than India would have liked in this chase and South Africa’s removal of India’s X-factor Varun deserves significant credit.“He’s a world-class bowler and he’s had massive success, in all the different formats he’s played, in all the different leagues and yes, especially the internationals. So I think it’s been fairer for us, I think it’s not like in the past where we’ve been quite hesitant, but I think it’s just about really making sure we’ve been there in terms of if he bowls a bit of a bad ball, we’ve got away. “And it wasn’t spinning a lot tonight, so you can kind of trust the line. And once we felt that, then we felt, OK, we’ve got to take him down because he’s a threat to every team he plays against. So that was definitely something we talked about,” Miller said of their plans for Varun.
Jasprit Bumrah was the one bright spark for India on an otherwise poor day against South Africa in the Super Eight of the T20 World Cup. (AP)
South Africa showed how and why India is very ‘beatable’. Their emphatic win, which severely affected the hosts’ net run-rate, raised the call for a lot of soul-searching ahead of the next game against Zimbabwe in Chennai on Thursday. Ahead of the South Africa match, Surya was categorically asked about Sanju Samson’s potential place in the Playing XI to add a right-hander to the mix, but he chose to laugh off the suggestion. A day later, conversations around the same idea are growing louder with coach Ryan confirming that the wicketkeeper batsman will remain a point leading into crucial games.Should you ditch the woefully out-of-shape Abhishek Sharma? Or the struggling Tilak Varma? The options are on the table and it looks extremely difficult for the two left-handers to retain their place in the playing XI for the Zimbabwe clash.“They’re all fantastic players. So do you stick with guys who we think have done really well over the last 18 months and who might be reluctant to get a few runs now? Or do we twist and bring in Sanja, who’s also a fantastic player and obviously helps tactically with his right-hander at the top of the order and I’m sure that’s going to be talked about in the next few days,” he explained in these two very important games.India have some time to make this crucial call, but if they stick to the left-is-right approach, it won’t be easy to see Sikandar Raza on top of the bowling mark when the Indian openers go out to bat in Chennai. He, too, would have seen previous games with the defending champions and could have a similar response to Miller at the end of the game. Everything is very predictable and the ball is now in India’s court to surprise their opponents with tactical smarts.
