Rohit Sharma on India’s win against Pakistan: Captain Rohit Sharma credited his team for another clinical victory.
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During the third match of the Super Four stage of the ongoing Asia Cup between India and Pakistan at Dubai, India defeated their arch-rivals by 9 wickets. In which was an overarching win for India, it saw them registering their fourth consecutive victory in the tournament.
Pakistani batsmen failed to stand tall behind their captain Sarfraz Ahmed’s decision of batting first after winning the toss. After losing early wickets, Pakistan took a lot of time to recover. As a result, they ended up scoring a below par 237-7 in their allotted quota of 50 overs.
What further didn’t work in their favor was their fielders dropping both Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma in the first five overs. Resultantly, both the Indian openers ended up scoring individual centuries to register India’s biggest ODI win (by wickets) over Pakistan.
A 210-run opening partnership saw India cruising in the chase. It seemed as if the opposition had no answer whatsoever against Dhawan (114) and Sharma’s (111*) 15th and 19th ODI centuries.
During the post-match presentation, Sharma expressed admiration for all his team members. “We asked something like this from the boys. It was challenging conditions, and it was tough coming out and playing in these conditions. All of them showed great character. We spoke about leaving our past performances in the past and doing the job again today and they did it”, he said.
With bowling figures of 10-1-29-2, Jasprit Bumrah was the pick of the Indian bowlers. It was his pinpoint yorkers which aided his team to restrict the opposition for a mediocre total. “Bumrah has matured as a bowler now, has played a great amount of cricket and he understands his bowling. it’s very important for any player. He understands what fields he needs to set and on a wicket like that you need to be clever, keep it tight, keep up pressure”, Sharma said about the 24-year old Bumrah.
Apart from Bumrah, Sharma was contended at his bowlers delivering as a unit. “Bhuvneshwar too did exactly the same We never wanted to let them off the hook and our spinners have been magnificent throughout the tournament. They kept taking wickets and when you do that, you win.
“It was a challenge when Hardik got injured. We were playing four spinners including Jadhav. We wondered about going with three seamers, but knowing these conditions, we went with the spinners and they have been great. Jadeja too, to come back into the side and do so well”, Sharma added.
Sharma and Dhawan are now at third spot as far scoring runs by Indian openers are concerned. On being asked about his experience of opening with Dhawan, Sharma said, “Opening with Dhawan is, I don’t even need to speak to him, it’s important to let him be and we’ve batted enough to understand each other’s games. We know how important the first 10 overs is. The chase becomes a little easier if that’s done well.
“The most important thing was to bat as long as possible and that’s what we did. Nothing is easy [hitting sixes] and when it comes off it looks nice”, he further said.
Social media platform Twitter saw people heavily praising the Indian team. Watch some of the tweets below:
