Varun Chakravarthy: Not Hardik Pandya or Ishan Kishan, Namibian captain called this Indian a game changer

New Delhi. The Namibian team had to lose the T20 World Cup 2026 match against India by 93 runs. After the second consecutive defeat in the tournament, Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus said that the team lost the match between 6 and 10 overs. Captain Gerhard Erasmus said about the pitch of Arun Jaitley Stadium, “I don’t think there was any change in the pitch. In fact, the quality of India’s bowlers came to the fore, especially in the middle overs. The phase between overs 6 to 10 proved to be decisive and that is where the match went out of our hands.”

After the crushing defeat against India, captain Erasmus said, “I felt that the ground was very small. Due to some dew in the second innings, bowling could have been difficult for the spinners. So after 26 overs, we felt that we were in the competition, but unfortunately that spell by Varun broke the back of our run-chase.”

Even though JJ Smits took 1 wicket for 50 runs in 4 overs, he bowled tightly and gave only 3 runs in the last over. During this period, India also lost 2 wickets. Praising Smuts, the captain said, “I think his death overs spell was also important. He came back after the powerplay, some runs were lost, but this is the kind of expertise we want in our team. The challenge for us has always been how to take both the beginning and end of the innings to the level of the big teams.”

The conditions in Chennai were probably favorable for us. I think there is still a lot left. We are not giving at 100 percent at this time. We would like to reach that level in this tour. We have a lot of potential in our batting, but we are not able to play enough balls in the right places to build a strong base and showcase that potential.