Team India captain Rohit Sharma said that his side can play on any kind of surface and win Test matches on it. While talking about India’s triumphs in Rajkot and Cape Town on completely different pitches, he stated that the team management doesn’t have any say on the kind of surfaces that are prepared for home Tests as well. However, Team India beat England by 434 runs in Rajkot on Sunday, February 18, to register their biggest Test win in terms of runs. After setting a huge target of 557, India bowled out England for 122 in 39.4 overs.
At the post-match press conference, Rohit said, “We have won a lot of matches on such wickets before. The turning tracks and on pitches where the ball turns remain our strength. It gives us balance. We have given results for many years and we will get results in the future as well. But we don’t have control over certain things — we don’t discuss whether we want rank turners or not. We come here (at the venues) two days before the match and how much can we do anyway in two days?”
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The Indian captain again said, “The curators decide and make the pitch. We have the strength to play on any wicket and win on it. When we won the Test in South Africa (at Cape Town), everyone knows what kind of wicket it was. (In) the last three Tests we played, there were different challenges. In the first Test (Hyderabad), the ball was spinning and the pitch was slow. In Vizag, it was (keeping) low. As the game progressed, the wicket became slower. Here, it played well for the first three days. Today, we saw that the ball was turning and it was low. This is (in) the nature (of pitches), we get pitches like these in India. But if we get rank turners, we will play on them as well.”
However, Team India lost the first Test in Hyderabad by 28 runs but they bounced back strongly to win the second Test in Visakhapatnam by 106 runs. They also registered another impressive win in Rajkot.
“Obviously it’s a very good feeling to win a game like that and especially with such a young team as well. (We had) two debutants (Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jurel) and not a lot of Test matches amongst the playing eleven as well. A lot of these guys are learning from the experience that they’re having in the middle. We got to learn a lot about how we played in Hyderabad and then in Vizag when we won,” Rohit Sharma concluded.
The fourth Test of the India-England series starts in Ranchi on Friday, February 23.
