New Delhi:
Rohit Sharma put on a magnificent display of batting in his 100th Twenty20 International as he blasted 85 off 43 balls to help India win by eight wickets in the second Twenty20 International at the SCA stadium in Rajkot. Rohit blasted six fours and six sixes and was looking good for a record fifth century. The India cricket team skipper got to his 18th fifty with a six and then smashed three consecutive sixes off Mosaddek Hossain as Bangladesh's bowlers felt the wrath. Rohit shared a 113-run opening stand with Shikhar Dhawan and the match was effectively sealed.
Speaking after the end of the match, Bangladesh skipper Mahmudullah said it is very hard to stop Rohit once he is in the zone while batting. "If Rohit (Sharma) is having a good time, I think it is really hard to stop him. When he is batting brilliantly and if he is in a good mood, you never know what he is up to. But if we could have got 175-plus, we could have given ourselves a bit of a chance to defend. The wicket was good to bat on and the new ball was coming nicely on to the bat. If you get a good start early on, especially batsmen like Rohit and Shikhar (Dhawan), it is hard to stop them on that wicket," Mahmudullah said.
The Bangladesh skipper added that losing wickets in the middle overs was vital in the side losing momentum. In the 13th over, Yuzvendra Chahal got rid of Mushfiqur Rahim and Soumya Sarkar while Washington Sundar got rid of the dangerous Mohammad Naim. Mahmudullah stressed that batting in the middle overs.
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"I don't think we need to change much but there are few areas in the game, especially when we are batting, which we need to rectify. We have missed the momentum, we could have got 170. We were 102-103 after 12 overs, so we should have got 170-180. Losing a few wickets in the middle overs cost us and these are the areas we need to look on. The openers gave us a very good start and that was a 180-plus wicket. The wicket was very good to bat on. It was the momentum of the game that we needed to understand. We should have understood the threats we faced at that particular time, but we didn't recognise those things and fell short of those runs. I think if you have more than 40 dot balls in a T20, you have less chance of winning the match. We played 38 dot balls there. Maybe that's okay, but there will definitely be opportunities to improve. But our batsmen had to take more responsibility. The goal was to get a good score but we couldn't do that. It is the failure of our batsmen," Mahmdullah said.
