India play five bowlers in fourth T20 as Suryakumar explains team call

Visakhapatnam: New Zealand won the fourth match of the T20 series against India. New Zealand posted 215 runs on the board in Visakhapatnam. In response, India's innings ended at 165 runs. Team India is usually strong in run chases, but their batting faltered in this match. The Indian team also went into the match with one less batsman.

Why only 6 batsmen?

After the defeat, Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav explained why the team played with only 6 batsmen. Arshdeep Singh was given a chance in place of the injured Ishan Kishan. Captain Surya said, "I think we deliberately played 6 batsmen today. We wanted to have 5 perfect bowlers and challenge ourselves. For example, if we are chasing 200 or 180 runs, we wanted to see what it feels like if we lose two or three wickets. But it's all good. We wanted to give opportunities to all the players who are part of the World Cup team."

In this match, Team India did not give Shreyas Iyer a chance. On this, he said that their aim was to give opportunities to players who are part of the T20 World Cup 2026 squad. He said, "We wanted to give opportunities to all the players who are part of the World Cup team. Otherwise, we could have played other players as well."

Why did Surya choose to bowl first?

Surya won the toss and decided to field first, but this decision proved costly for Team India. The captain said, "We chose to bat second because we have been performing well while batting first. I wanted the players to learn to chase under pressure, in a situation where the target is big and wickets fall." This was a good challenge for us, and we learned from it.

He said, "There was a lot of dew here. If we had managed to build one or two good partnerships in the middle, like the way Dubey batted, if another batsman had stayed with him, the outcome of the match could have been different. We lost by almost 50 runs, but in such run chases, one or two partnerships can make a big difference."