‘Aur ye team World Cup jeetegi’- Twitter rages as India lose a practice match against Western Australia ahead of 20-20 World Cup

Things are not going as smoothly for the Indian cricket team as they had hoped for. With the hopes of a billion people on their shoulders, the team underperformed in the recently concluded Asia Cup 2022. The sectors however showed confidence in the same squad and sent the same group of players to Australia for the 20-20 World Cup.

Fans hoped that the team would come with a win or at least go deep into the tournament. Early signs however do not impart much confidence among the followers. The team faced early setbacks with the ruling out of Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, and Deepak Chahar from the World Cup.

Now, in another, India has lost their second practice match against Western Australia by 36 runs. The game started off with Western Australia coming onto bat first and setting up a target. Although one opener Josh Philippe (8) could not do much, the other D’Arcy Short (52) came up with a solid opening knock against India. Number three batter Nick Hobson also smashed 64 off 41 with five fours and four sixes to take Indian bowlers to the cleaners.

India did a comeback from then on and restricted the Western Australia side to just 168/8 in 20 overs. R Ashwin emerged as the best bowler from the Indian side having taken three wickets. Harshal Patel meanwhile took two.

Coming on to chase what was an achievable target in this modern-day cricket, India got off to a poor start. Rishabh Pant who came to open the innings departed at just nine runs, leaving the team in limbo again. KL Rahul held the wicket from one end and continued playing at an unimpressive rate. Although he did score 74 runs, it was achieved in 55 balls which is nothing to write home about.

None of the other batters could come up with a match-winning performance and India could only manage 132/8 on the board in 20 overs. Twitter was understandably shocked and infuriated with India’s loss against a club team.

Here’s how Twitter reacted to India’s loss against Western Australia in the second practice match.