Mushtaq Ahmed comes up with WI players' reactions to claim that Ind-Eng WC match was fixed

Mushtaq Ahmed reckons that India deliberately lost their World Cup 2019 group match against England that was played at Edgbaston. Earlier, former Pakistani cricketers Waqar Younis and Abdul Razzaq had come forward and said that India had lost the match to knock Pakistan out of the World Cup. However, Ahmed said he became sure about it after West Indies players had expressed their disbelief at the end of the contest.

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'After India's loss to England': Mushtaq Ahmed

During an interview with a Pakistani news channel, the former spinner went on to say that he was working with the West Indies squad at last year’s World Cup and after the Men In Blue had lost their match against the eventual World Cup winners, some of the star-studded West Indian players including the likes of Jason Holder, Chris Gayle and Andre Russell came forward and told him that India didn’t want to see Pakistan qualify for the semi-finals.

Coming back to the India-England contest, it was a must-win game for the hosts and a loss would have brought curtains down on their campaign while Pakistan would have qualified for the semi-finals. 

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Ben Stokes recalls 2019 World Cup clash against India, questions MS Dhoni

Stokes, who recently came up with a book titled 'On Fire', questioned the run-chasing tactics applied by the Indian batsmen when the two nations clashed in the 38th match of the same tournament. The all-rounder said that he saw “no intent” from MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav when the two batsmen were at the crease.

In his book, Ben Stokes wrote that he was mystified by the batting approach of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma during their partnership. The two batsmen took up 25.5 overs to form a 138-run second-wicket stand when India were in pursuit of a 338-run target. He also questioned MS Dhoni’s batting technique as the veteran wicketkeeper scored only 42 runs from 31 balls, even though the batsman arrived at the crease when India required another 112 runs from their remaining 11 overs.

The southpaw believes that India were in with a chance of winning the contest when MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav were batting together. He wrote that the England camp were always aware of Dhoni’s approach of sticking around and taking the game as close as possible. However, the two batsmen were committed to taking singles until the penultimate over. While the final over of the Indian innings yielded 12 runs, the contest was already out of the ‘Men in Blue’s’ reach by then. Ben Stokes said that India’s batting seemed bizarre to the England team management, but admitted that their tactic played into England’s hands.