Rohit Sharma, India’s captain, hopes Jasprit Bumrah, ace pacer, recovers in time to play the final two Test matches against Australia. However, he stressed that Bumrah would not be rushed from his ‘critical’ back injury. “About Bumrah I am not sure at this moment. He will not be present for the Test matches. He is not expected to be there for the first two Test matches. However, I hope he will play the next two Test matches. Rohit said that India won the series with a 3-0 win over New Zealand. There is a lot of cricket ahead. We will monitor. We are in constant contact with the NCA doctors and physios and are always hearing from them.
Bumrah has been in a long-term rehab since his back problem recurred during the Asia Cup. Bumrah was a member of the squad to face Sri Lanka in the ODI series earlier this month but he fell ill again before the series-opener. He also mocked the host broadcaster for displaying his tenure on the giant screen. “Three years sounds like a lot, but I have only played 12 or 13 ODIs in those three years, if I’m not mistaken. It was broadcast on the broadcast so you guys should be aware of what is happening. Sometimes, we have to show the right things sometimes,” he said. This was Rohit’s 17thODI since his last ODI hundred against Australia at Bengaluru in January 2020. COVID was the reason that everyone was home for eight months. There were no matches. Then, for the majority of the last 18 month, we have been playing T20 cricket.
Suryakumar Yadav is currently the best T20 cricket batsman. He has reached two hundred and I don’t believe anyone else has. Since my injury, I have played two Tests. It is hard to believe that all of this has happened. “Rohit was full praise for Shardul Thakur, Shubman Gill. Shardul won the third ODI in India’s favor with three wickets in ten balls, including the prized wicket of Tom Latham for an unbeaten duck. “He is very critical of us, we know our position as a team, and what he brings is very important to us. I hope he continues to put up performances like these and it will only benefit the team. He is smart, he’s played a lot in domestic cricket, and he knows what to do.” he said. Shardul certainly has the skills to excel in this format. He is a skilled knuckleball bowler and he bowled it to Tom Latham today. It was well planned in the middle by several players – I wasn’t included. It was Virat (Kohli), Hardik(Pandya), and Shardul. It was a good plan. We all feel happy if a plan works.
Rohit admitted that he was impressed by Gill’s maturity, describing Shubman Gill’s “70-plus” average in ODIs as “crazy”. He is very knowledgeable about his game and he plays his innings very well. This is what you want in one-day cricket. You want to play big and you want to get deep into the game. He has proven it. He has big hundreds, no mater how difficult it may seem. He got a double 100 and 34 was his second-best score. He was able to calculate and understand the importance of batting deep. A set batsman must bat for as long as possible. This is why we had 350 plus runs in that game. He has shown great maturity in his thinking about the game and how he approaches it. “Tuesday’s win elevated India to number one in ICC’s rankings of ODI cricket.
Rohit dismissed the ranking system and instead focused on the lessons from this series with the aim of excelling at the ODI World Cup to be held in India in October-November. “Honestly speaking, rankings don’t matter. I saw that we were fourth before the series. He said that he didn’t know why we were fourth in the first place. “In the last year, I don’t think we lost any series so I don’t know how this ranking happens.” “And we don’t really look into it. We are preparing for the big day and all the games we play will take us to that big event. We want to be prepared for everything. We are playing in our home conditions. We need to be prepared for a few challenges.
“There are a few combinations, so it gives you a great chance to do all that before World Cup. You get a lot more confidence if you win all these games. That is what we want. We won every game except the Asia Cup when we went to T20 World Cup. We were confident that we would do well when we went there. Unfortunately, things didn’t go our ways, but that is what happens. We have another chance, so we want to keep playing and ticking all the boxes.”