Tom Moody explains what went wrong in India's conquest at the 2019 ICC World Cup

Former Australian batsman, Tom Moody is no stranger in terms of understanding what is right and wrong for a team. The 54-year-old led Sunrisers Hyderabad to their maiden IPL trophy, coached them till the end of the 2019 IPL. He then applied to become the next Indian head coach, with RCB’s current director of cricket operations Mike Hesson and current head coach Ravi Shastri also in contention.

Tom Moody appeared on ‘Cricbuzz In Conversation’ hosted by Harsha Bhogle where he unravelled what went wrong in India’s 2019 World Cup campaign. “India sabotaged their 2019 World Cup hopes by creating uncertainty in the team.”

"One of the huge challenges India has to face, they like it or not, is the expectation of their talent. There is no question India has got more talent by a long stretch than any country playing our game. But sometimes that can be a burden," Moody told Bhogle on Cricbuzz.

"When you have got too many players to choose from you can cloud your thinking and philosophy on how you want to plan, how you feel you need to play to win a particular tournament. The best example according to me was their campaign in England," he added.

The biggest question for India leading into the World Cup was, who is their number 4 batsman? There were a lot of changes in the batting order that made things a bit uncertain for the favourites. "It seems that India was ready to play the tournament 12 months ago but to the lead up to the actual start of the tournament did their very best to sabotage their hopes of winning that tournament by changing batting orders, changing personnel within the batting order, creating uncertainty amongst the whole playing group.”

India walked onto cricket’s biggest stage as favourites to win. They dominated the entire tournament, winning seven out of nine matches before succumbing to New Zealand in the all-important semi-final.

"If anything when you come into a major tournament that's when we crystalise people's thoughts and doesn't get influenced by what I call white noise because you know exactly what path you are on, you know exactly what you need to be doing, you just need to be consistent with that because players also sense the uncertainty when those things are happening," Moody remarked.

[With Cricbuzz inputs]