The T20 World Cup 2022 saw the Indian cricket team eliminated in the semifinal round. While making it this far in a competition of the calibre of the World Cup is an honourable accomplishment, the way India was eliminated has raised numerous issues among fans and experts. For their repeated failures to win ICC championships, some have even dubbed the Indian team “chokers.” Even the former captain of India, Kapil Dev, who led his nation to its first-ever World Cup victory in 1983, acknowledged that the team’s failure to advance past the semifinals of the T20 World Cup in Australia could be characterised as “chokers.”
While Kapil acknowledged that there isn’t much wrong with labelling the Indian team as “chokers,” he also argued that now is not the time to be overly critical because these are the same players who have earned praise for their performances on a national level in the past. “Yes, we can call them chokers. That’s okay. They come close and then choke,” Kapil said. In addition, he advised people not to judge the Indian team too harshly in the wake of their loss. “But don’t be too harsh. I agree, India played bad cricket, but we cannot be overly critical based on just one game,” he said.
Speaking on India’s loss against England, Kapil claimed that England’s players performed better and made greater use of the conditions on the day. In the T20 World Cup, a handful of Indian players fared poorly. India was once again eliminated from the event in the semi-final stage, as players like KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik, Mohammed Shami, Rishabh Pant, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Axar Patel all struggled to perform to their full ability.
