India batter Cheteshwar Pujara has said that India needs to improve their batting in the overs from 6 to 15 after their recent defeat to Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup on Tuesday. Sri Lanka handed Rohit Sharma and his men their second consecutive loss in the Super Fours stage, with the first one against Pakistan on Sunday as well.

Rohit Sharma led from the front after a shaky start to the innings and scored a 41-ball 72 to ensure that Sri Lanka had a tough target of 174 to chase. But bowlers failed miserably as Dasun Shanaka and Bhanuka Rajapaksa ensured that they reach the finish line. However, speaking after the match on ESPNCricinfo, Pujara said that India needs to improve their batting in the middle overs as well.

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“I think it is the middle overs. Overs between 6 to 15 and we’re not finishing as well. Because we’re losing too many wickets in the middle overs, we don’t have proper batters batting from 15 to 20 overs. So I think we need to figure that out. I think we need to learn to bat well in those 6 to 15 overs. Today, we didn’t start well, lost a couple of wickets early on. But if you look at the last game against Pakistan, we got off to a good start but we still kept on losing wickets from 6 to 15. In the last five overs, we can’t go hard because we are always five down. So it’s the middle overs where we will have to work a bit more on our batting,” said Cheteshwar Pujara.

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“Hardik Pandya has been bowling well. But we can’t consider him a 5th bowler. I think expecting four overs from him every time is not correct However, we didn’t have enough choices because Avesh Khan was ill. In the future, there might be a few changes in the team. If Hardik continues to play the role of the sixth bowler, it would be better”, said Cheteshwar Pujara.