“It’s not just about making my shots and making plays, when you have so much experience you have to use that experience and do whatever is required for the team, and at that time for me it was about making the game. It was important to push as deep as possible and build partnerships and reach a good score,” Rohit said after the game.
He scored 17 runs off 11 balls in the first two overs after England had bowled India out, but as England repeatedly advanced from the other end, he made a comeback to score 29 runs off 40 balls. It was done before he could hit his next boundary – this took his score to 87 off 101 in the 14th over, setting India up for a 100-run win.
The margin of victory may have been equally convincing, but Rohit felt India left too many runs on the field. He did an early repair job with KL Rahul, putting on a 91-run partnership for the fourth wicket and then added 33 more runs in partnership with Suryakumar Yadav, but fell 13 runs short of his century. From there, England took two wickets regularly and restricted India to 229 for 9.
Rohit said, “I still felt that even after the end of the match, we were behind by 20-30 runs.” “The new ball was a bit challenging and then obviously as the game went on, the ball got softer, it was not easy to rotate the strike. But we said in the middle that we have to keep digging, keep digging and then, eventually “You know we got a good partnership there, but like I said we were 20-30 runs behind by the end.”
Despite the conditions, Rohit said some of India’s problems came down to the looseness of their batsmen. Shubman Gill was bowled by a good ball from Chris Woakes – albeit driving a touch in the air – and then Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer were poor in their shot selection, offering catches, the former for a duck. After their repair work, Rahul and Rohit and then Suryakumar were also caught trying to hit big shots.
“We weren’t good with the bat today, losing three wickets in the first powerplay is not an ideal situation, but when you are in a situation like that you just want to build long partnerships, which we got. But then at the end some guys threw it away. Given, including myself,” Rohit said. “But at that stage I was just thinking about being positive and I wanted to keep the balls away from my area. That way you put pressure on the bowler and also on the opposition, but yes, when you look at the overall, I thought we were 30 runs behind there.”
“You know when you have a bowling line up like that, it’s very important that the batsmen get runs on the board, give them something to work with and then trust them to do the magic.”
Rohit Sharma
“So you know when you have a bowling line like that, it’s very important that the batsmen get runs on the board, give them something to work with and then trust them to do the magic.”