Sarfraz Ahmed rued the missed opportunities and said Pakistan have to field better if they are to challenge India.
“If we keep dropping catches, we won’t win games,” he said after the match.
“We’ve done hard work at fielding. So I’m not sure what’s going wrong. I thought the pitch was difficult to bat on, that it would be hard for a new batsman to start here and for that reason we should have held on to our catches.”
While Pakistan bettered the 163 they scored the last time they faced India, in the group stage, they could not capitalise on the position of strength – they were 165/3 at one stage with both Ahmed and Shoaib Malik set at the crease – but stuttered towards the end of the innings.
Conceding that Pakistan were “20-30 runs short” Ahmed lauded Sharma and Dhawan for their performance and talked about a mismatch in the skill level between the teams.
In both games, India picked up wickets with the new ball and had the opposition’s top three back in the pavilion for not many before the first drinks break. If it was Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the first game, Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav did the damage on Sunday, 23 September by dismissing both Pakistani openers.
“They had set batsman to do the job. We’re trying to get early wickets, we’re talking with the bowlers, and when we don’t get them, with batsmen like Rohit and Dhawan, it’s hard to come back,” he said.
“Their skill-level is high, ours is not quite there, but by the final, we’ll get better. It’s a do-or-die match for us in the next game (against Bangladesh), we’ll do our best.”
