Experienced Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik opined on the flaws in KL Rahul’s innings during the World Cup final between India and Australia played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday, November 19. However, India lost to Australia by six wickets in the final after dominating the entire tournament. Australia won the toss and restricted the hosts to 240 on a dry wicket. KL Rahul was India’s top-scorer with 66 runs from 107 balls as well but played 49 dot balls.

Analyzing India’s World Cup loss on A Sports’ flagship show ‘The Pavilion’, Shoaib Malik said: “He (KL Rahul) has been taking a lot of responsibility when they lose early wickets. But if you see his innings today, that’s not a KL Rahul innings. He went into such a zone where he was only trying to play 50 overs. He should have played his own game. If you are batting in tough conditions and you aren’t able to find boundaries, at least you rotate the strike. That wasn’t happening. There were a lot of dot balls.”

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However, Virat Kohli scored 54 off 63 balls before he got out by Australia captain Pat Cummins. Shoaib Malik expected Kohli, who smashed three centuries in the tournament so far, to add one more to his tally of 50 ODI centuries in the final as well.

“It was looking like that (Kohli would score another century). On a tough pitch, he had a strike rate of 85.71. We shouldn’t forget that he is a top-scorer and was in his prime form. I was expecting today also that he would get a hundred after the way he was playing. Because of this on a tough pitch I was expecting a total of 270 at least, but that didn’t happen,” Shoaib Malik concluded. “If Shubman Gill (4), Shreyas Iyer (4) and Ravindra Jadeja (9) would have scored in 20s then the total could be pushed to 270”