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Rohit Sharma praised Axar Patel for his 47-ball 52 and revealed why the all-rounder was sent in at No 5.
IND vs ENG, 1st ODI: Axar Patel justified his promotion to bat at No 5 with 47-ball 52 (AP)
Rohit Sharma said the idea behind promoting Axar Patel to No.5 in the batting order in the first ODI against England was to maintain the left-hand-right-hand batting combination and to exploit the left-arm spinner’s improved batting prowess.
Chasing a modest target of 249 after Ravindra Jadeja (3-26) and debutant Harshit Rana (3-53) helped bundle out England for less than 250, India lost Rohit and Yashasvi Jaiswal with 19 runs on the board. Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer (59) added 94 runs for the third wicket. But the crucial decision to promote Axar Patel paid rich dividends as the allrounder scored a superb 52 and shared a 108-run partnership with Gill, who top-scored with 87, as India won the match by four wickets with 11 overs to spare.
Rohit said the idea behind promoting Axar was to exploit the situation as England had two spinners who were going to bowl into the left hander.
“We want a lefty in the middle, it is simple. We know they have a couple of spinners who are going to bowl into the left-handers and we wanted one out there. Axar is an improved batter in the last couple of years, we got to see that today. We needed a partnership and Gill and Axar batted really well,” said Rohit in the post-match presentation on Thursday.
Rohit said there isn’t anything specific which the Indian team wants to try and achieve ahead of the Champions Trophy but would look to keep ticking all the boxes in the last two games of the series.
“Nothing specific. Overall as a team, I just want us to keep making sure that we keep doing the right things as often as possible. There is nothing specific that we want to try and achieve,” Rohit said.
“We want to try and tick every box that is there to be ticked in terms of bowling, batting and stuff like that. So (we) pretty much managed to do that today, although I felt I we shouldn’t have lost those wickets at the end.”
“It would have been good, but again, guys are trying to put pressure back on the bowlers and while doing that things like this can happen,” he added.
Rohit said he was satisfied with India’s performance given the team was playing an ODI game after almost six months.
“I’m pretty happy because we all knew that we’re coming off from a long time playing this format so it was important for us to just regroup as quickly as possible and understand what is supposed to be done,” he said.
“This is a slightly longest format where you have time to come back into the game. When things start to go slightly away from you, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to keep going away.
“You have to try and pull things back and that is what exactly what we did. A lot of credit to all the bowlers there, everyone chipped in with that performance and it was important and necessary for us to keep that going,” he said.
(With inputs from Agencies)
- Location :
Nagpur, India, India
