Follow UsWhile the margins might not suggest it wasn’t the easiest of victories for India. Their shoddy fielding notwithstanding, the Indian openers chased down 145 in 20.1 overs, ensuring no one else from their lineup had to spend time in the middle.
The Indian skipper, Rohit Sharma, spoke about wanting to get some runs under his belt ahead of the World Cup and was happy to do just that in today’s game.
“To start with, there were some nerves, but once I got my eye in, I wanted to cash in and get my team home. When we came here, in the back of our mind, we knew what our World Cup 15 would look like, except maybe one or two spots.
Talking about his team’s performance so far, he did not want to look too much into how they had played so far in the Asia Cup. He was effusive in his praise for Hardik and Ishan’s rescue act against Pakistan on Saturday, but he was also wary of their lack of intensity in the field.
As they move into the next round, India will want to be more aware of the field. It doesn’t help that since the 2019 World Cup, India have the second-lowest catching efficiency amongst the 10 participating teams in the upcoming World Cup.
“We can't really look too much into these two games, one was washed out, but luckily we got to bat in the first game and bowl in this one. We haven't been at our best, but a few guys are coming out after months out of the game. Once we move ahead in the Super Fours, there's no room for complacency. First game, under pressure, Hardik and Ishan got us into a good position. Today our bowling was okay, but fielding was below-par.
His counterpart and namesake, Rohit Paudel, was mighty proud of the fight his men put up in their first-ever game against India. An opening partnership of 65 in under 10 overs gave them the right platform to build on.
However, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja bowled with relentless accuracy, restricting the Nepalese batters from scoring runs freely. The experience of facing a team of this calibre would hold them in good stead.
They weren’t as effective as they would have liked with the ball in hand, but Paudel wasn’t too flustered by it. The incessant rain didn’t help either, as the excessive dew made it that much more difficult to bowl with control.
“Our openers did a very good job for us. We could have done better in the middle overs. We were maybe 30-40 short. If we had done better in that phase, we could have got 260-270. In the last 4-5 months, our lower order has done a great job - we are very proud of them. I think in these conditions, it was really hard because of the dew, but our bowlers did really well.”