ROHIT LAUDS INDIAN BOWLING UNIT FOR CONSISTENCY

India captain Rohit Sharma was all praise for his bowling unit, which has consistently kept opposition teams on tight leash ensuring the side’s smooth passage into the Asia Cup final. India have assured themselves a spot in the summit clash after winning two Super Four Games against Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively.

The Indian bowlers have restricted Pakistan to 162 and 237 in two games while bowling out Bangladesh for 173. “The entire bowling unit stuck to their task and hats off to them. Repeated performances are challenging in these conditions and I don’t want to take any credit away from bowlers,” said Rohit, who was involved in a double hundred partnership with Shikhar Dhawan.

Rohit mentioned Jasprit Bumrah for his exceptional bowling in the ongoing tournament. “I think he’s [Bumrah] matured as a bowler now, played great amount of cricket and he understands his bowling. Bhuvi also did the same,” the skipper said.

Rohit was also happy that the strategy of playing four spinners, including part-timer Kedar Jadhav, has clicked so far with Ravindra Jadeja’s comeback adding a new dimension. “When Hardik got injured, the challenge was to field four spinners and we thought about a few combinations (3 seamers, 4 spinners) and in these conditions it is important to not give much pace. For Jadeja, to come out and perform like that is amazing.”

They now have 13 century opening partnerships and Rohit feels batting with Dhawan becomes easy as both of them are clear about their roles. “With Shikhar, I don’t need to talk much. It’s important to let him be himself. We have batted enough to know each other to start off like that and we clearly know our roles. We always knew that the new batsman will find it difficult to keep going straightaway and Shikhar and I knew it.”

On his own batting, the skipper spoke about how he has worked on his pull shots which have worked well for him during this tournament. “Nothing is easy [talking about the pulls for six]. I have really worked hard on those kind of shots. When it comes off it really looks nice.”

Dhawan said he has become sensible in his shot selection of late, in white ball cricket, and it’s from Rohit that he has learnt to convert those 50s into 100s. “...he’s very good at converting those 50s into 100s and that’s something I’ve learnt from him. It’s good that we both value our wicket. When you play 20 overs on this track, it gets easy. The plan was not to lose wickets in the first 10 overs as you might not get runs easily early on,” Dhawan said.

“With Shikhar, I don’t need to talk much. It’s important to let him be himself. We have batted enough to know each other to start off like that and we clearly know our roles”