India on Tuesday suffered humiliation on home turf when they lost to visiting Australian team by four wickets in the first T20 International of the series. Frustrated by the defeat. skipper Rohit Sharma held bowlers responsible for the poor performance.
Batting first, India made 208-6 in 20 overs with Hardik Pandya remaining not out at 71 from 30 balls. KL Rahul made 55 while Suryakumar Yadav made 45 from 25 balls.
Australia achieved the target by losing six wickets with four balls to spare. Cameron Green was the star of the match with a knock of 61 from 30 balls. Matthew Wade remained not out at 45 from 21 balls, while Steve Smith contributed with 35 from 24 balls.
Reacting to his side’s defeat, Sharma said that he was let down by his bowlers.
“I don’t think we bowled well. 200 is a good score to defend, and we didn’t take our chances in the field. It was a great effort from our batters, but bowlers were quite not there. There are things we need to look at, but it was a great game for us to understand what went wrong,” Sharma said.
His Australian counterpart Aaron Finch said, “It was a good contest, wasn’t it? We had some really good partnerships, there were some good contests between the bat and ball. They came hard at us. You expect the run rate to slow down if you lose wickets. The batters tried to change the momentum of the game. That’s what we play for, we still try to instill all the processes leading into the World Cup”
Cameron Green, who was declared the Player of the Match, said, “It was a good experience opening the innings alongside Finch. I enjoyed Hardik Pandya’s batting too. Loved the way he connects the ball. It was kind of good to watch them bat, and that gave us an idea about how to go about while chasing.”
Both teams will face each other for the second T20 International of the series at Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur, on Friday.
