Rohit hails India ‘grit’ in Pakistan rout; home side hand arch-rivals a seven-wicket whipping

AHMEDABAD, India (AFP): India skipper Rohit Sharma heaped praise on his bowlers’ “grit” for inspiring Saturday’s seven-wicket World Cup rout of old rivals Pakistan.

Rohit smashed a 63-ball 86 with six fours and six sixes as India chased down their 192-run target with 117 balls to spare.

However, he insisted his bowlers had been key after Pakistan collapsed from 155-2 to 191 all out.

“There is no doubt about it that the bowlers set up the game for us again today. It was a great effort,” said Rohit.

“I don’t think it was a 190 pitch. At one stage we were looking at 270-280 but they came back and showed grit and that says a lot about the guys.”

Man of the match Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Hardik Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja all took two wickets each.

India now sit on top of the 10-nation table after three wins in three games.

Pakistan are fourth with two wins and one defeat.

“We pride ourselves on whoever gets the ball doing the job for us. It can be someone’s day. It can’t be everybody’s every day,” added Rohit.

“My job as a captain is important there to read the conditions and who is the best guy to trouble the batsman.”

He added: “All in all it is looking good, and I want to keep my fingers crossed. We don’t want to get too excited or get too low, we want to stay balanced.”

Saturday’s win was an eighth for India in eight World Cup meetings with Pakistan stretching back to their first clash at the 1992 tournament.

“I’ve said it quite a few times now, this was an opposition we wanted to play against because we want to play quality opposition,” said Rohit.

“Every opposition we come up against in this tournament is quality and can beat you on any particular day.”

Babar Azam, who top scored for Pakistan with 50 before his team collapsed, admitted the middle order and opening bowlers under-performed.

“We started well. We were playing normally but then we had a collapse in the middle order. We did not finish well,” said Azam.

“Not good for us. The way we started, we were targeting 280 or 290 but the collapse cost us so our total is not good.”

Azam said with such a low total to defend, he needed his fast bowlers to fire from the start.

As it was, India reached 50 in 40 balls and 100 off 83.

“With the new ball, we were not up to the mark. If we had been, it might have been a different ball game,” said Azam who hailed counterpart Rohit.

“The way Rohit played, it was an outstanding innings. After that we were just trying to take wickets to try and win the match.” – AFP