'We wanted to see what we can achieve' - Rohit Sharma details India's bowling experiments against Netherlands

India comprehensively defeated the Netherlands by 160 runs in the final league stage game in the ODI World Cup 2023 on Sunday, November 12 in Bengaluru. With this win, India extended their unbeaten streak to 9-0 in the tournament and will now gear up for the first semi-final in Mumbai on Wednesday, November 15 as they take on New Zealand.

After setting a mammoth target of 411 for the Dutch side, India captain Rohit Sharma used as many as nine bowlers, including himself. Part-timers like Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill, and Suryakumar Yadav were seen bowing in the one-sided game. After the match, Rohit explained the reason behind trying out different options.

"It is something always in our mind when you have five bowlers. You want to create [those] options within the team and I think we have that option now. Today, we had nine options. It's important. This was the game where we could have tried certain things. The seamers going out there and bowling [those] wide yorkers when it was not needed. But we wanted to do that, as a team, as a bowling unit we wanted to try and do something different and see what we can achieve," Rohit said at the presentation.

Rahul Dravid is happy with how players responded after Hardik Pandya's injury

India came into the marquee event with two seam-bowling all-rounders - Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur. They played in the initial few games as India were going in with Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj as the two frontline pacers. After Hardik suffered an injury in the game against Bangladesh and was subsequently ruled out of the ODI World Cup 2023, the 'Men in Blue' tinkered with their combination and brought in Mohammed Shami as the third frontline pacer in the playing XI.

"We always built the squad keeping in mind that we need six bowling options and kind of build the depth of the squad. Obviously, Hardik was an important part of that puzzle in the sense that he gave you that balance. But once we lost him, I just think the way the guys have responded - yes, we have only five bowling options - but each and every one of them is performing really well and bowling really well, and I think that gives Rohit a lot of confidence as well. He [Kohli] did take a wicket as well, after nine years, so could give him some credit," Rahul Dravid, India's coach, told Star Sports.

"Just the way that the middle order has batted means that, I'd like to believe our lower order can contribute if needed, but just knowing we've got seven top-quality batsmen makes a big difference as well. So, we've had to go to probably what is plan B for us [without Pandya the allrounder] but just the way we responded and the way we played in the last five games has been fantastic. It gives us a lot of confidence going into the semi-final. It gave us an opportunity, after they got the big score, to be able to mix and match a little bit and look at some of the other options that, hopefully, we don't need, but we may need." Dravid added.

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