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Rohit said he was trying to put the bowlers under pressure and would continue to play that shot as it had helped him earlier.
Indian skipper, Rohit Sharma accepted that his shot selection was not up to standards in the recently concluded Test series against New Zealand but he had no regrets over having an aggressive approach when batting as he looked to put the opposition’s bowling attack under pressure.
Rohit had begun batting aggressively during India’s chase of 147 in the second innings of the final Test in Mumbai. But his innings was cut short on 11 runs as he looked to play a pull shot but was caught by the fielder at the mid-wicket region.
Rohit said he was trying to put the bowlers under pressure and would continue to play that shot as it had helped him earlier.
“Shot selection in this particular match wasn’t up to the mark, starting from me. The only thing I would say is that when you’re chasing a target like that, you want to try and put the pressure on the bowlers. You can’t allow bowlers to bowl on one particular spot. You have to try and do something about it,” Rohit said during the post-match press conference.
“But, yeah, I will say I played a bad shot. But I don’t regret it, honestly speaking, because that has given me a lot of success in the past. So I will continue to do that,” he added.
The Indian captain suggested that the batting unit did not live up to expectations in the series and felt that there were a lot of things that needed to be done.
“I accept the fact that we were not good enough with the bat in the entire series. There were a lot of good things also that happened during the series with the bat,” he shared.
“But yeah, in the first two Test matches, we felt very, very short in the first innings and then New Zealand were ahead in the game that cost us those games. And even Now I thought 147 should have been chaseable. But yeah, we just were not good enough at the back. We didn’t apply ourselves. There were a lot of mistakes that were made,” he added.
Rohit was also critical of himself and the lack of defence in his innings but he also felt that he did not have enough time in the middle to defend the ball in the first place. As an opener, Rohit suggested that he intends on setting the tone right from the first ball which means that he looks to go aggressive.
“So sometimes when the openers go in, they set the tone and sometimes you can fall on the other side of it as well. And this series I have fallen on the other side of it, but I don’t see that I have lost faith in my defence,” he shared.
“It’s just that I need to spend more time to defend balls which I haven’t done in this series and I accept that I haven’t batted well in this series. But yeah, look, it’s been only these two series where I’ve not had enough time in the middle. The series that I played before Bangladesh, I spent a lot of time,” Rohit added.
The captain of the Indian Test team would look to work on all the shortcomings with the bat as the side will be looking to come back strongly in the upcoming Test series against Australia later on in November.
(with IANS Inputs)