India bowling coach Bharat Arun on Sunday admitted that the Men in Blue looked a bit below-par in their first game of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup against Pakistan. India and Namibia will lock horns against each other in the Super 12 stage of the ongoing T20 World Cup at the Dubai International Stadium on Monday. India’s hopes of progressing to the semi-finals rely completely on Afghanistan. The Mohammad Nabi-led side needs to defeat New Zealand for the Men in Blue to have any chance of making it to the semi-finals.

“I am not trying to give any excuses but this World Cup, the trend has been that the team which wins the toss has a big advantage especially when you are playing in Dubai. The wicket eases out when you bowl the second time, it is no excuse, we should have done better, we should have batted better. In the first game, we had the chance to defend our total but we looked a little below-par,” said Arun while replying to an ANI query during a virtual press conference.

Talking about the high points under his tenure as bowling coach, Arun said: “I think it has been a great and outstanding journey for me, there have been ups and downs but I think the team is in a much better position than it was when we started. Pretty happy about it, the highest point would be the kind of bowling we have, we strived hard to achieve success overseas as a team and we went about achieving that. The highest point would be two back-to-back series wins in Australia.”

“More or less winning the series in England, there is one more Test to go, the performance of the team during this English series was outstanding. Actually, it took us a little while, it is a combination of strength and conditioning, the physiotherapy and the bowling department all coming together to create this type of bowling unit. India can always boast of good fast bowlers but the workload management in place ensured that the fast bowlers remained fresh and that we could even rotate,” he added.

Further talking about the bowling depth, the coach said: “The likes of Mohammed Siraj coming in, Prasidh Krishna, with the workload management in place, I am sure we will be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. Absolutely, not only the volume of cricket our country is playing, but also being in the bubble and playing is not very easy. They do not need sufficient breaks, the mental health is going to be very important. This is going to be the norm for us in the coming year.”

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“In our country, we have a good pool of fast bowlers so we can afford to field different teams for different formats. Also, it keeps our bowlers mentally and physically fresh,” he added.

If Afghanistan defeats the Kiwis, then India needs to beat Namibia and it will then come down to the net run rate between these three teams involved.