7th July was a day to remember for the Indian fans as it marked two special occaions. Firstly it was the 41st birthday for MS Dhoni and 2nd it marked the return of skipper Rohit Sharma to the Indian colors. Rohit did not play the Birmingham test due to COVID-19. This was Rohit’s first appearance for India since the series against Sri Lanka, post which he played the TATA IPL 2022. The Indian captain was rested for the 5 match T20 series against South Africa. KL Rahul was supposed to captain the side but a groin injury to the 30 year old meant Rishabh Pant took over the captaincy.
Rohit Sharma’s straight faced reply to English commentator –
The game saw Jos Buttler take over the English white ball captaincy from Eoin Morgan who bid goodbye to cricket. Rohit Sharma happened to win the toss and elected to bat first. The commentator at the toss asked him about the constant captaincy changes but Rohit Sharma played it straight with an answer in his typical style. Rohit Sharma said “ "No. It's something we have prepared. We know the scheduling, we got to have the understanding, that players will be swapped every now and then. You can create your bench strength as well, a lot of opportunities for guys to come out and play. Exciting times, these guys have been here for a while playing in Ireland and played a couple of games here as well”
#TeamIndia have won the toss & elected to bat 🏏#ENGvIND pic.twitter.com/U6rgjOWr2i
— Doordarshan Sports (@ddsportschannel) July 7, 2022
Rohit praises the efforts of Hardik Pandya –
Hardik Pandya has turned a corner ever since the captaincy of the Gujarat Team and recently Indian team has fallen on his shoulders. The 28 year old came out to bat at number and scored his 1st international T20 half century. Pandya scored 51 off 33 balls, but his day wasn’t complete. Called into bowl in the 6th over, Pandya made immediate impact as he got the wickets of Malan and Livingstone before picking the wicket of Roy. Speaking about Pandya the proud Indian captain said “I was impressed with his (Hardik) bowling. He wants to do that a lot more in the future, bowled quick and used his variations too. Of course, his batting is there for us to see. That's the reason we wanted to bat (ball swinging under lights)”
Indian batting unit gets a thumbs up from the skipper –
India scored an impressive 198, despite looking like scoring over 220 as at one stage India were scoring nearly at 11 runs per over. Rohit with 24 began the assault, followed with 30’s from Deepak Hooda and Surya Kumar Yadav. Pandya put the icing on the cake with his 50, while Karthik scored a quick 11. Speaking about it after the game, Rohit opined “Great performance from ball one. All batters showed intent. Although the pitch was good, we played good shots and never got ahead of the game. You got to make use of those six overs in the powerplay, There is a certain approach we want to take in the powerplay. You got to back yourself in this game, sometimes it comes off, sometimes it doesn't. The whole batting unit needs to understand the direction the team is taking and the guys were spot on today”