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Afghanistan lost to New Zealand in their final round-robin game on Sunday and closed the gates of semi-final for India. While the Men in Blue were heavily dependent on the result of the game, they could only blame their own performance for the embarrassing ouster at such an early stage of the tournament. Despite having world-class players in the side, Team India failed to win even one of the games against Pakistan and New Zealand at the mega event which eventually played a huge role in their ouster.
While Team India were already under the radar of critics for not bagging a single major ICC trophy since 2013, their early ouster from the ongoing T20 World Cup has raised a few eyebrows with many questioning what went wrong in the tournament. While some felt that Team India were a bit unlucky, others blamed the second leg of IPL 2021 which didn't give the Men in Blue enough time to prepare themselves for the world event. Meanwhile, former India all-rounder Kapil Dev has slammed the players for prioritizing IPL over playing for the nation.
I’m not saying do not play franchise cricket: Kapil Dev
“When players prioritise IPL over playing for the country, what can we say. Players should take pride in playing for their nation. I don’t know their financial conditions so can’t say much. But I feel that first in line should be the country’s team and then franchises,” said the World Cup-winning skipper on ABP News.
“I’m not saying do not play cricket there (for the franchise), but the responsibility is now on the BCCI to plan its cricket better. To not repeat mistakes we committed in this tournament is the biggest learning for us,” he added.
The former skipper of India added that the nation should start their planning for the next World Cup as soon as possible.
“It’s time to look at the future. You should start planning right away. It’s not that since the World Cup is over, the Indian team’s entire cricket is too. Go and plan. I just feel that there should have been some gap between IPL and the World Cup. But this is certainly there that our players today have a lot of exposure but they could not make the most of it,” said Kapil Dev.