The Indian skipper Rohit Sharma has all praises for the Indian bowling line-up for producing an outstanding performance against Pakistan in conditions which weren’t exactly bowling friendly. On a flat deck and in the scorching heat in Dubai, Bhuvneshwar Kumar (3/15), Jasprit Bumrah (2/23), Kedar Jadhav (3/23) and Kuldeep Yadav (1/37) were on target as they dismissed Pakistan for 162.
During the post-match presentation ceremony, Rohit said, “Right from the start, we were quite disciplined. We wanted to learn from the mistakes which we made in the last game. Today was a great game for the bowling department because I knew the conditions weren’t great for it. But we kept the conditions aside and did the job.”
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He further added, “We stuck to our plans. A lot of improvement from the last game, spinners kept it tight, got the odd breakthroughs. The bowlers took wickets early as well, in the first 10 overs was magnificent. It was important to do that because they have quality in there and we wanted to make sure not to make things easy for them.”
Sharma also revealed that he asked his bowlers when Pakistan had an 82-run partnership for the third wicket between Babar Azam and Shoaib Malik as it was important for India to stick to the plan. Jadhav has been a surprise element since he started bowling the round-arm off-spin, which batsmen across teams have found difficult to hit.
Describing the same, Rohit said, “He (Jadhav) has been working on his bowling, takes his bowling very seriously. Every now and then, he does the job which is crucial. Enjoyed the little innings that I played, got out to a great delivery. We haven’t played here much but now we have understood how to plan on such pitches.”
Bhuvneshwar was named as Man of the match for his brilliant first spell in which he dismissed both the Pakistani openers.
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Describing his spell, Bhuvi said, “On a track where the ball doesn’t swing, it’s important to bowl back of a length and try to hit the stumps. The key was not to give too many runs and force the batsmen to make mistakes. It’s tough and hot, also the tracks are flat and perhaps due to the heat, Hardik got injured as he was playing in England and couldn’t adjust to the different conditions here.”
On the other hand, Pakistan skipper Sarfraz Ahmed said that poor shot selection led to the crumbling of the Pakistan batting line-up. Sarfraz explained, “The start was not at all good. We got some momentum in the middle but again lost wickets and could not recover. We batted poorly and all of us played poor shots to get out. And so many of them were soft dismissals except Babar, who got a good ball. We had prepared for the two spinners but the third one chipped in with wickets. It is nice to get a wake-up call early on in the tournament and we would not want to commit the same mistakes. ”
