T20 World Cup: Suriya hopes to withstand the pressure

Ahmedabad: “creative Championship It happens (The real tournament begins),” Varun Chakravarthy exhorts his team in a BCCI video ahead of the Super 8s. “The dogfight will be very important.”

creative Championship also brings creative pressure. If the league stage, which includes matches against affiliated teams, is about avoiding banana peels, then the Super 8 team will see the difficulty quotient rise exponentially.

Call it a coincidence, the tournament’s quick fix schedule has pitted all the table tops against each other. A packed lineup of unbeaten teams means every team has momentum on their side.

Come Sunday, either India or South Africa would have tasted defeat.

South Africa coach Shukri Konrad, who sparked some controversy for his “we want them to grovel” remark after beating India 2-0 at home in the Test series, tried to lift the pitch again.

“There is a lot of scrutiny, especially from a team like India. They will be under a lot of pressure to get to the semi-finals and go on and get to the finals as well,” he told South African media. “We hope we can expose them and make them vulnerable under this pressure.”

India skipper Suryakumar Yadav was asked if the home team was feeling the pressure. “Look, it’s very difficult to say that there’s no pressure or that it’s easy to deal with,” he said. “When you play a big event like that at home, you definitely feel the pressure. Not that you can escape it.”

Regardless of the results, part of the pressure the India captain has to deal with comes from the expectations of the fans. Fans are closer than ever to players, due to the proximity that social media provides. Close your social media handles and it’s still not possible to stay away from fans who want to meet in person. Signature requests have been replaced by selfie requests. All they want is to wish the captain well. But it can all get stressful between training sessions, media duties, team meetings and players’ personal time.

Suriya added: “When you meet a lot of people in the hotel while you are travelling, they have the same goal, which is to win the World Cup. We have to perform well. So yes, of course, there is pressure.” “But at the same time, everyone has a different plan for dealing with this problem. We’re doing our best to keep it simple – be in the present, and try to keep our feet on the ground.”

Different captains handled the pressure differently. Rahul Dravid was very active and did not stay in the job for long. Sourav Ganguly was a natural leader who knew how to redirect pressure. Virat Kohli was strong-willed and could sail on the strength of belief in his abilities. Rohit Sharma never took his position seriously and had good management skills.

Syria has its own defense mechanism to deal with pressure. He came out laughing in the months leading up to the World Cup when his bat fell silent. Now that fellow youngster Abhishek Sharma has had a poor start, he is still defending him with the same enthusiasm.

When asked if dropping No. 3 Tilak Varma had been considered, he laughed off the question. “If there is no pressure, there will be no fun in playing this game,” he summed up.

Pressure is one of the reasons why World Cups do not see a huge spike in results. No matter the circumstances, conservatism creeps into your strategy as risks rise. There have been only seven totals over 200 in the 40 games so far — all with affiliated teams on the receiving end.

The 300+ marketing pitch has turned into trolling fodder. “In bilateral matches, players come and play with more freedom, but the World Cup finals bring a completely different kind of pressure,” Konrad said.