KOLKATA: In the World Cup, it gets tougher with every passing stage and now that India is in the knockout rounds, the difficulty factor has gone up another notch.
Push boundaries with our YouTube channel. Subscribe now!
England’s opponents in the second semi-final in Mumbai on Thursday were somewhat underwhelming in the early stages of the match but India head coach Gautam Gambhir insists his side must be at their best to beat them on Thursday.
“They’re a world-class team,” Gambill said. “They have a lot of good players and Wankhede is a tough venue. Hopefully we can turn up and get another chance to do something special. Hopefully we can play our best game and continue to tick all the boxes. We need to put in a special effort to beat a quality team like them.
“I don’t believe in ‘peaking at the right time,'” Gambill said. “When you represent your country you have to win every game, it’s as simple as that. It’s a short tournament so you have to try to play your ‘A’ game every time and in this format you can’t take any opposition for granted.”
The current strategy involves a lot of data analysis and careful study of video, but for Gambhir, intuition still trumps all else. “I’ve never seen this data,” he said. “I don’t even know what the data is. I definitely don’t believe it because I feel it’s more of an instinct. T20 cricket is about instinct and supporting your instinct. Whatever I know about the game and the T20 format, I try to give that to the captain and try to help him.”
Batting coach Sitanshu Kotak echoed Gambhir’s statement that facing England will not be easy. “We have to turn up and execute,” he said, adding, “Abhishek Sharma was very successful against England. It will be a tough game but I think we will do well.”