Wanted to challenge Shami with the final over: Rohit

11 runs off the final over, the common consensus was either of Bhuvneshwar Kumar or Arshdeep Singh would be handed the tough task. But a move to throw the ball to Mohammed Shami came out of the blue. The 32-year-old’s last appearance was in the 2021 edition of the T20 World Cup, against Namibia, and since then hasn’t been part of the plans. 

Until now, where Shami was handed the toughest over in the innings. In the most nonchalant of manners, the right-arm seamer stunned the world, with three wickets in the final over, defending ten runs with easy. It was an exhibition of the highest order, bowling the yorkers with relative ease, as Australia succumbed to a defeat. 

At the post-match presentation, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma admitted that Shami bowling was on the cards, and insisted that he wanted to challenge the seamer with the final over. 

“Shami is coming back after a long time, so we wanted to give him an over. Wanted to give him a challenge and let him bowl the final over, and you saw what he did,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation. 

Rohit further called for improvement from the bowlers, stating that there was a lack of consistency from them. 

“There is room for improvement, but I want more consistency from the bowlers. You need to keep things simple and hit the deck hard. Overall a good game for us, they had a decent partnership and that put us under pressure.”

On the batting front, India had a good outing against the Men in Yellow, with KL Rahul coming out strong. Suryakumar Yadav continued his rich vein of form, with a 33-ball 50, with six boundaries and a six. Rohit complimented the batting efforts, stating that India need to be smart batting in these conditions. 

“I thought we batted well, towards the end we could have added 10-15 runs more. We always want a set batter to stay till the end, SKY did it, overall a great batting effort with nice bounce, was a pitch where you can trust your shots,” Rohit said. 

“You got to be smart with batting on grounds like these. You can't forget to push the balls into the gaps, scoring 8-9 runs in an over can be quite an effective plan.”