Nagpur, March 12: Sourav Ganguly, former India captain and batting legend, reckons that the current Indian team is a very strong one and unworthy of criticism having not dropped a game so far in the tournament.

In an exclusive interview with bcci.tv, Sourav spoke about India’s batting and the teams they need to watch out for in the knockout phase of the competition.

On India’s performance at the 2011 ICC World Cup thus far

They’ve done well. They haven’t dropped a game yet. What’s all this talk about India? They’ve got a big game today and I think their tournament starts from today. And that’s what they’ve want. They want to get on with the big matches.

On MS Dhoni’s view that he was happy with Harbhajan Singh not taking wickets but bowling at a good economy-rate

I agree with that. Harbhajan has bowled well. I know wickets are important but it’s not that he’s not picking wickets and going for seven or eight runs an over. He’s going for three, three-and-a-half an over, four an over, so that’s fine.

On Piyush Chawla being picked ahead of R Ashwin against Netherlands

I wouldn’t play Chawla. I would play Ashwin.

On the form of the batsmen other than Yuvraj Singh

Sachin [Tendulkar]’s been hitting the ball well, [Virender] Sehwag’s hitting the ball well. We cannot just jump up and down with one or two games. They’ve not yet lost a game. They’ve beaten every team in the competition. England should have won that game, so it’s gone well for India. We just over-react a bit too much.

On the Indian fielding

Yes, that’s one area where we are not the best, but we’re not the worst either. And if we can pick up ten percent, if we want to, that would be a lot.

On the teams India should watch out for in the knockout phase

I think all teams. Because I’m a firm believer, in sport, it’s that particular day. Nobody expected England to beat South Africa. They’ve beaten them. Nobody expected England to play so well against India the other day in Bengaluru. So it’s on that particular day. From the other group there’s Australia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, New Zealand. New Zealand (laughs) smashed Pakistan. As I said, it could be anyone.

On this team vis-à-vis the Indian team that reached the 2003 ICC World Cup final

You cannot compare. We had better bowling conditions so obviously the bowling looked well. [Javagal] Srinath, Zaheer [Khan], [Ashish] Nehra, Harbhajan [Singh] bowled brilliantly. But we had conditions which helped seamers in South Africa. The batting’s pretty much the same. The batting was very strong then, it’s very strong now. That was a very strong team and this is also a very strong team.