Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra feels Rohit Sharma’s decision to give the new ball to Mohammed Shami ahead of Mohammed Siraj made the latter redundant as well. While talking about India’s bowling, Chopra added that the below-par target made the Indian bowlers try too hard, and giving the chance to Siraj later virtually made him unusable too.

“We started well with the ball but were slightly wayward because we were going left-right too much. We were thinking about picking up wickets quickly because we didn’t have runs on the board. We went with Shami instead of Siraj because we didn’t have runs on the board. When we did that, Shami did pick up a wicket, but Siraj got marginalized. He didn’t get a chance at all. His game was almost over because you couldn’t bring him in,” he said.

However, Jasprit Bumrah and Shami bowled the first 10 overs of Australia’s innings and Siraj came in the 17th over and was given just a three-over spell where he was ineffective. While Jasprit Bumrah (2/43) and Mohammed Shami (1/47) were expensive in their first few overs, they had put India in a good position with their three strikes but they failed to restrict Australia as well.

“Bumrah picked up two wickets at the start. Shami also took one, but 15 in the first over and 13 in the second, 28 runs in two overs, a lot of runs were scored at the start. However, picking up three wickets in the powerplay implied that you had started controlling the game. However, dew came after that. It made a massive difference. The ball stopped gripping and spinning and came nicely onto the bat. It was easy to rotate singles. They were hitting boundaries easily. Travis Head, who got the better of us in the WTC final, again got the better of us,” Aakash Chopra concluded.