India vs Sri Lanka, Asia Cup 2022: Rohit Sharma urges Indian middle-order to work on their shot selection

Indian captain Rohit Sharma felt Indian middle-order can work on their shot selections as he felt they were 10-15 runs short of a winning target against Sri Lanka during Super 4 stages of Asia Cup 2022 in Dubai on Tuesday. India lost the match by six wickets while Sri Lanka chased down 174 runs with a ball to spare.

Rohit contributed a 41-ball 72 on the day while Suryakumar Yadav scored a 29-ball 34 as the second best Indian batter on the day.

“We just ended up on the wrong side, as simple as that. We could have capitalised on the first half of our innings. We fell 10-15 runs short. The second half wasn’t good for us,” Sharma said during the post-match presentation ceremony. “The guys who were out in the middle can learn about what shots can be played. These things can happen. Losses like these will make us understand what works as a team.”

Avesh Khan was earlier ruled out of the remainder of the event after falling ill. Sharma revealed Khan turned up quite sick otherwise the conditions were favourable to play four seamers.

“I was happy with three seamers. Unfortunately, Avesh hasn’t turned up well in the fitness tests. He didn’t respond well because he was quite sick. Ideally, the combination we would play is four seamers, but three seamers was something we wanted to try before the World Cup,” said Sharma.

The 25-year-old express pacer earlier missed the game against Pakistan last Sunday as well. India lost that game by five wickets.

On the back-to-back defeats, Rohit Said they need to find answers as a team as they know where they stand with the current combination.

“We need to find answers as a team, like where we are with five bowlers. We know now where we stand with this combination,” he said.

Rohit said the back-to-back losses in the Asia Cup — the first against arch-rivals Pakistan on Sunday — will teach the team how to find answers before the ICC event in October-November.

“No long term worries, we have lost only two games back to back. Since the last World Cup, we haven’t lost too many games. These games will teach us. We wanted to put ourselves under pressure in the Asia Cup. We are still looking for answers,” Sharma said.

He praised young pacer Arshdeep Singh for his impressive bowling at the death.

“Chahal and Bhuvi are the senior pros and have been doing it for a while. I need to get answers from the younger ones.

“With the ball, it was a good effort to take it to the last over considering the start they had. The spinners bowled aggressively and got wickets in the middle overs, but Sri Lanka held their nerve.

“We thought with the bigger boundary we could use the spinners well. But the plan didn’t work out. Their right-handers batted for very long. I thought of bringing in Hooda and using the longer boundaries,” the 35-year-old captain said.

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