DharamsHala, March 6: The contest against England’s ‘Bazballers’ was probably the biggest Test of Rohit Sharma’s captaincy at home and not only did the India skipper ace it, he also got to “learn a lot” about his leadership in what he described as a “series of comebacks” India have been put under pressure in all the four Tests played thus far but after the Hyderabad debacle, the hosts managed to put the pressure back on the opposition to seal the series in Ranchi. The finale starts here on Thursday.
Rohit struggled to define the ‘Bazball’ approach adopted by England but gave the opponents due credit.
“Honestly, I don’t know what Bazball means… whether it is to go and strike? whether it is to go and defend and wait for the loose ball? because I’ve not seen any wild swinging from anyone. I don’t know exactly what this term means,” Rohit said on Wednesday.
“But yeah clearly they’ve played better cricket than the last series they were here. And you’ve got to give credit to two of their batters who got big hundreds (Ollie Pope and Ben Duckett,” he added.Earlier, Duckett had suggested that the series’ leading run-getter Yashasvi Jaiswal learned a lot from the opponents’ fearless approach. Rohit was amused when reminded of that remark.
“I think there was this guy called Rishabh Pant in our team. Probably Ben Duckett hasn’t seen him bat,” he quipped.
India are expected to win at home but what made the feat remarkable was that the home team bossed over ‘Bazball’ in the absence of senior players including Virat Kohli, Mohammed Shami and K L Rahul, who only played the series-opener.
It forced India to play four debutants in Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Akash Deep and Rajat Patidar.
Besides Patidar, all the rookies were able to make an impact and the MP batter would be desperate to make amends here.On the eve of the final Test, Rohit was asked about his thoughts on the fiercely fought series and his learnings from it, and he had a lot to say. (PTI)
