India put up a shambolic show against the Lankans in the opening encounter in Dharamsala which put the hosts on the back foot.
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Sri Lanka’s constant pressing forced the Indians to move out of the track. India’s worst ever score saw them tottering at 29/7 at one point of the match.
Credits to Sri Lanka for turning up against the Indians after quite a long time. They registered their first victory over India after 12 matches across all the formats.
However, the interim Indian skipper Rohit Sharma admits that India misses the reliable services of Ajinkya Rahane in the opening slot.
“I think we made it clear in Sri Lanka that he is an opening batsman and we don’t want to keep changing his batting slot. It plays on anyone’s mind not just his, if one’s batting order is kept on changing.
We have identified him as an opening batsman and that’s the only reason he had to sit out. Having said that we understand the runs he scored in the past few series,” Rohit added as per the quotes for News18.com.
The Indian team management never shies away from giving others a fair amount of chances as well. So they decided to give Manish, Kedar and Iyer some opportunities ahead of the away futuristic tour.
“But we wanted to give these guys Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Shreyas Iyer fair amount of game before we start touring abroad. It’s important that they take the opportunity,” he added further.
Rohit Sharma heaped praise on MS Dhoni’s composure. We witnessed Dhoni’s solitary heroics in Dharamsala and was good at capitalizing crunch situations of the game.
“He has been at that situation so many times and has proved himself again and again. First of all, I never understood why there was a talk of he being in our plans or not.
Once he gets runs the whole conversation changes. He showed us again. I wish one of our top order was batting, so that we could have got more runs. But we learn from it and move forward,” conceded Rohit.
Indias are facing the pressure of a must-win game in a bid to be in contention in the three-match ODI series.
It will be quite interesting to see how the Indians would play in the next match which is scheduled to be played at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali on December 13.
