Dubai, November 7

Outgoing head coach Ravi Shastri and skipper Virat Kohli, who will lead the country for one last time in the shortest format, would aim to finish India’s underwhelming T20 World Cup campaign on a positive note with a victory over Namibia in the team’s final Super 12 match here tomorrow.

After New Zealand hit the winning runs against Afghanistan to break Indian hearts, the mood in the Indian camp was evident when BCCI’s official media WhatsApp group had a message for the journalists — “The optional training session in the evening has been cancelled.” The dejection was understandable as for first time since the 2012 edition, India had failed to make the knockout stage of an ICC event.

Very rarely has an Indian team played such an inconsequential game at an ICC event since its last league game in the 1992 World Cup against South Africa after already being out of the race for the semifinals.

It’s not the first time that India are out of a global tournament before the last-four stage but never has it been so frustrating where one could clearly read the writing on the wall. And that is something that will hurt Shastri, a proud man, who has done his bit to make this a formidable all-condition Test team with a lethal fast-bowling attack.

For Kohli, who may lose his ODI captaincy in the coming days, this wasn’t how he would have liked to end his T20 captaincy stint with the national team having already quit IPL captaincy. — PTI