Indian captain Rohit Sharma admitted that they need to work on their bowling after the team suffered a 49-run loss against South Africa in the third T20I at the Holkar Cricket Stadium, Indore on Tuesday. India’s fast bowling has been a concern, especially at the fag end of the innings as the pacers have failed to execute their plans and skills.
Furthermore, India will be missing the services of their pack leader, Jasprit Bumrah in the T20 World Cup. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, and Arshdeep Singh have been expensive and they will need to pull up their socks before the T20I showpiece.
India conceded 73 runs in the last five overs of the third T20I against the Proteas as the bowlers once again failed to hit the right areas. The visitors posted a par score of 227 runs as Rilee Rossouw and Quinton de Kock were able to take Indian bowlers to the cleaners.
Indian batting is doing a fine job as the top order is in great touch but the bowling remains the team’s Achilles Heel before the all-important T20 World Cup.
Rohit Sharma said in the post-match presentation, “As a team we said at the beginning, no matter what happens with the result – there’s always room for improvement. We want to keep getting better as a team. Teams have been quite challenging, they can challenge in all departments. Something we have been talking about at length. We need to look at a lot of things. Surya’s form is a concern (laughs). We need to work on our bowling. We played against two quality sides, we came across tough challenges. We need to see what better we can do. We are working towards that, guys need a lot of clarity, it’s my job to make sure it happens.”
He added, “It’s a work in progress, we need to keep working and keep finding answers to it. A lot of the guys haven’t been to Australia, that’s why we are going there early. We want to play on the bouncy pitches of Perth, we want to see what we can do there. Only 7,8 members of the squad have been to Australia, so we have organized a few practice games. We need to understand what combination we can play. Bumrah is out of the World Cup, so we need to find a bowler who has experience of bowling in Australia. Not sure who that bowler is going to be, we will see once we travel to Australia, we’ll find it out there.”
India will begin their T20 World Cup campaign against Pakistan on 23rd October at the MCG.
