“You Can’t Really…”: Sunil Gavaskar’s Blunt Take As Rohit Sharma FTo Left-Arm Pacer Again

Batter Suryakumar Yadav and pacer Jasprit Bumrah starred with impactful performances in their respective departments as India eased past Afghanistan by 47 runs in a T20 World Cup Super Eight clash on Thursday. Suryakumar’s 53 off 28 steered the 2007 champions to 181 for 8 in 20 overs after captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to bat first at Kensington Oval, Barbados. Later, Jasprit Bumrah returned with exceptional figures of 3 for 7 in four overs to help India bundle out Afghanistan for 134 runs.

While the duo of Surya and Bumrah had a brilliant day at work, contrary was the case with batter Rohit Sharma, who scored only 8 runs off 13 balls. The Indian captain lost his wicket to a left-arm pacer once again.

While trying to play a cross-batted shot on a fuller delivery of Afghanistan’s Fazalhaq Farooqi, Rohit hit the ball in the air and got caught out at mid-on.

Rohit looked extremely cautious against pacer Farooqi in the first over of the innings, certainly keeping in mind the left-arm angle that has troubled him a lot in international cricket. But the India batter eventually perished to the pacer in the third over of the innings.

Former India captain and batter Sunil Gavaskar has come out in defence of Rohit.

“He is an experinced batter. He knows what he has got to do. You cannot really tell Rohit Sharma to change his game because of the angle of the bowler. Yes, sometimes you might say, because of the angle, don’t hit towards the on-side, maybe look to play the inside out shot over extra cover. Either things you try and maybe understand that is what he should have done,” said Gavaskar on Star Sports after the game.

“But a man who has got so much of tons and tons of experience of playing limited-overs cricket doesn’t need to. He has got out. At the end of the day, batters have some way to get out. If you get out caught behind you can’t say you have got a weakness against the off-stump. If you have scored 10,000 to 15,000 runs and get out maybe 40 times outside off-stump that doesn’t feel there is a weakness,” he added.