Cricket News

‘I want more consistency from…’ – Rohit Sharma sends out strong message after 20-20 World Cup game against Australia

India won the 20-20 World Cup game against Australia by six runs.

Oct 18, 2022 12:06 pm

The Indian Team secured a victory from the jaws of defeat in the warm-up game against Australia on Monday. India rode on the back of KL Rahul’s stroke-filled 57 and Suryakumar Yadav’s half-century which was an innings filled with sweeps and other gorgeous strokes. This allowed India to get to a good score of 187 in their 20 overs but, the turning point of the match for India was in the 20th over.

Mohammed Shami bowled a superb over and got 4 wickets for just three runs in what was the first over that he bowled which gave a 6-run win for India. But Rohit Sharma was not entirely pleased with the team’s performance on Monday as he highlighted some of the areas of concern for the Men in Blue and also talked about how the Indian side can perform better.

Going into the 20-20 World Cup, bowling was identified as the Achilles heel for the Men in Blue because of the absence of Jasprit Bumrah and also the lack of experience in the bowling unit. With Shami coming in as a replacement for Bumrah the bowling has been strengthened but Rohit was critical about some of the issues that the team needed to sort out.

There is room for improvement- Rohit Sharma

Speaking at the end of the practice game, Rohit Sharma called on the bowlers to come up with better performances. “I thought we batted well, towards the end we could have added 10-15 runs more. We always want a set batter to stay till the end, SKY did it, overall a great batting effort with a nice bounce, was a pitch where you can trust your shots. You got to be smart with batting on grounds like these. You can’t forget to push the balls into the gaps, scoring 8-9 runs in an over can be quite an effective plan. It was a great practice game for us.

“There is room for improvement, but I want more consistency from the bowlers. You need to keep things simple and hit the deck hard. Overall, a good game for us, they had a decent partnership and that put us under pressure,” he said after the match.