Rohit Sharma admits team India missed Ajinkya Rahane in first ODI

Team India were stunned by the Sri Lankan team in the first ODI at Dharamsala. After having been asked to bat first, the newly appointed skipper Rohit Sharma had a torrid time at the crease. The story was no different for the other batsmen either. India were reduced to 29/7 at one stage in the match. Had it not been for MS Dhoni’s fifty, more embarrassment would have fallen on India.

Certainly, the Indian team felt the lack of experience in their batting lineup. As per the recent quotes in News18, skipper Rohit Sharma admitted that the team missed the services of Ajinkya Rahane in the match. India opted to play Shreyas Iyer ahead of Rahane in the match. Rohit reasoned out that Rahane’s assigned slot in the team is the opening slot in the ODI format, and with no vacancy there, he had to miss out.

“I think we made it clear in Sri Lanka that he is an opening batsman and we don’t want to keep changing his batting slot. It plays on anyone’s mind not just his, if one’s batting order is kept on changing. We have identified him as an opening batsman and that’s the only reason he had to sit out. Having said that we understand the runs he scored in the past few series,” quoted Rohit Sharma.

“But we wanted to give these guys Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Shreyas Iyer fair amount of game before we start touring abroad. It’s important that they take the opportunity,” he added further.

On MS Dhoni

If there was an Indian batsman who managed to win the hearts of the fans once again, then it has been MS Dhoni. It was because of Dhoni’s fifty that team India managed to put a three figure score on the board. Speaking on Dhoni, Rohit Sharma mentioned that this is not the first time that Dhoni has bailed out India out of trouble. Hence, any questions about his place in the side is only pointless.

“He has been at that situation so many times and has proved himself again and again. First of all, I never understood why there was a talk of he being in our plans or not. Once he gets runs the whole conversation changes. He showed us again. I wish one of our top order was batting, so that we could have got more runs. But we learn from it and move forward,” conceded Rohit.

On the batting collapse

Trying to cite reasons for the batting collapse, Rohit Sharma noted that it was a young batting lineup. He insisted that if the team is put in the same position again, then the team will surely respond in a better way. He also credited the Sri Lankan bowlers for bowling exceptionally well. He noted that any bowler who would have kept the lines tight, had a very good chance of succeeding in the match.

“Credit should go to the Sri Lankan bowlers, they made full use of the conditions. But as a team, as a batting unit, days like these will teach us a lot of things, not always we will play on flat conditions and we as a team want to thrive in such conditions and come out on top,” mentioned Rohit Sharma.

“If you notice, any bowler bowling in that channel would have got wickets. For us we were trying to survive in those conditions because we knew that if initial overs we get over, wicket will get better but we lost wickets and we were also not scoring in that pace, so that put us in even more trouble. It is an eye opener, we will learn from it. It is a young batting group, these guys, including myself, will learn and play out of these situations well next time,” Rohit added further.