This has been true chasing but not setting.. not in this tournament at least. Think of some of the good totals batting first.. South Africa v Zimbabwe, UAE v Zimbabwe, West Indies v Ireland and West Indies v Pakistan all actually recovered from bad starts to explode at the end. Even Australia v England, although they played a pretty good innings all the way through, really exploded at the end to get 25 more than it looked like they might.
lol.
I suppose you could argue the constants here are ZImbabwe's crap death bowling and West Indies' effective lower order sloggers.. but I don't think the facts in the other games really back up Kohli's claim, other than India's two innings.
He was referring specifically to MCG though, dunno what the other games have to do with it?
Haha I missed "in Melbourne" somehow and thought he was talking about a tournament trend. My bad.
I've always found that it's ****ing hard to defend a score on a massive ground. Yes you get less boundaries but you end up giving away twos any time it gets through the infield, even if it's straight at the bloke on the ropes. Especially when its to long on/off because the non-striker can pretty comfortably take a five metre head start. Not only does it get out of hand before you realise it, but it's ****ing infuriating for the fielding side.
I think Kohli's comments are based on India's game against Australia earlier where India had wickets in hand but were not able to get as big a total as they would have liked. I sort of agree with him, I think India are just doing a better job of playing the early overs as compared to other teams who end up at 90/4 after 25 and then score big on the back end. Whereas India just score around 5-6 right through.
Its easier then defending on small boundaries where nicks go for 6. The modern day finishers are mostly boundary hunters imo.
Yeah a bit soft, something I would expect from Dhawan funnily enough.
The thing about the bigger grounds is that whenever you check the score, the opposition seems to be way ahead of where you think because they've taken so many twos. It's hard to get a feel for the game so it can get away from you. Bigger grounds might be easier for bowlers -- after all, they could just set their field as if the ground was smaller if they really felt it -- but harder for captains are more infuriating for fielding teams in general.
