Bowling coach Bharat Arun has said the team is still hurting from India’s World Cup defeat last year but the aim is to put behind the disappointment and channel it to dish out an even better performance at the T20 World Cup.
India topped the group stage with 15 points but lost to New Zealand by 18 runs on the first semifinal of the 2019 World Cup in Manchester. Although there is no surety surrounding the 2020 T20 World Cup scheduled later this year in Australia, Arun said the team will put its best foot forward to ensure a memorable T20 World Cup campaign.
“The World Cup loss still hurts us,” Arun said during the ‘Lockdown But Not Out’ series by FanCode. “It’s still hurting us and we’ll probably go all out to see that we leave no stone unturned in our preparation to make sure that we do exceptionally well in the World Cup. To win a World Cup, I think we need to really plan well and how far we execute our plan.”
“It’d take us at least 6-8 weeks for us to play international matches, whereby we’d be first working on the skill, and fitness in the camps and then we’ll progress onto match simulations, and hopefully the BCCI can organize a tournament just before we play the international matches, that would be great for us,” he said.
“I’m not worried about the bowlers because they’ve had ample time in the last 2 months, to work on strength and their fitness. Very rarely does an international cricketer, especially our bowlers, would get this kind of time to work on their fitness. Also, it is a wonderful opportunity for them to get over the little niggles, that they may have got over the long season.”
