Rohit Sharma leads India to a series victory after 8 years on English soil and aims for further improvement

Courtesy of Rishabh Pant’s sublime maiden ODI ton, India pulled off a stunning and memorable victory at Manchester’s Old-Trafford cricket stadium. India was in all sorts of trouble as England’s Reece Topley once again ran through India’s top order which consists of the likes of skipper Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, and Virat Kohli. But India was put back on track as Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant stitched together a solid partnership of 133 runs.

Batting collapses are something that has become a habit of this Indian outfit and they don’t seem to be improving at it. India raised many eyebrows with their aggressive style of gameplay in the T20I series, but come to the second One Day International (ODI), they had yet another batting collapse and lost the match by 100 odd runs. After their series win, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma said that there are “some solid guys” waiting in the wings who could have easily walked into any international side but said his team will need to improve further moving ahead.

“We’ve got some solid guys sitting on the bench who’ve been waiting to get a game. We are striving to create that bench strength. We came here and wanted to achieve something as a group in white-ball, and we did. Moving forward there are things we need to improve but are pleased with the effort. We were here last time and were beaten. Not an easy place to come and win games. It was a good pitch, but we do understand it’s not going to be easy if we lose wickets upfront. The positive side of it, is these guys haven’t batted much in the middle overs. Today we got to see that with Hardik and Rishabh. At no point, we felt they were panicking. They backed themselves and played cricketing shots”, said Rohit after the game.

The Indian skipper for all formats also addressed the fact that the top order needs to be consistent with the bat and put a solid partnership on the board so that the middle order and the lower middle order can flourish and play freely. 

(Inputs from PTI)