India captain Rohit Sharma has asked for the Indian batters, including Virat Kohli, to be “little brave” and step up when tackling the Australian spinners in the fourth and last Test of the ongoing Border-Gavaskar 2023 series which will be played in Ahmedabad.
Rohit Sharma rued India’s twin batting failures in the lost Indore Test, which Australia won by 9 wickets to keep the series alive. With this win while Australia have sealed their place in the WTC final, India are left in a tricky position: India have to win the Ahmedabad Test otherwise Sri Lanka will have a good chance to reach the WTC final if they defeat New Zealand 2-0.
India were bundled out for 109 on the first day in Indore, and 163 on the second day with Cheteshwar Pujara waging a lone battle.
KL Rahul was dropped from this Test after scores of 20, 17, and 1. The focus now was on the other two senior batters- Kohli and Pujara. Pujara played a gritty, solid, face-saving knock of 59 in the second innings, Kohli has managed 111 runs in the 5 innings in this series so far, averaging 22 with a best of 44.
Rohit Sharma refused to blame the Indore surface, adding that Indian batters needed to be a “little brave” to unsettle the opponent spinners’ lengths.
“When you are playing on challenging pitches, we need to be brave. We allowed their bowlers to bowl on one particular spot. Not taking any credit away from their bowlers. especially Nathan Lyon, he kept challenging us hitting the right lengths. When the bowler is trying to do that, gotta be a little brave which I thought we were not,” Rohit said in the post-match presentation.
When asked what his batters need to do to bounce back in Ahmedabad, Sharma was clear that “few guys” need to step up their game and take up more responsibility – he was perhaps referring to the seniors as a lot can’t be expected of the youngsters Gill and KS Bharat and India can’t always rely on their all-rounders – Jadeja, Ashwin, and Axar – to bail them out of trouble with the bat.
“Its all about everyone coming together and chipping in. We want few guys stand up and put their hand up to take the team through. You will falter in your plans and that’s what happened in this game, we didn’t adapt as well as we would have liked to,” the captain added.
