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India captain Rohit Sharma expressed discontent with the team's batters allowing the Aussie bowlers to settle into the game by not being brave enough with their batting approach after the host's loss in the third Test in Indore on Friday.
The skipper mentioned that playing on difficult pitches demands batters to be brave in with their stay on the crease while also crediting Nathan Lyon for his tenacity to keep hitting the right length throughout the Test. "When you are playing on challenging pitches, you need to be brave. We allowed their bowlers to bowl on one particular spot. Not taking any credit away from their bowlers. Especially, Nathan Lyon kept challenging us, hitting the right lengths. When the bowler is trying to do that, gotta be a little brave which I thought we were not. Things happen like that, but we can take a lot of credit for how we batted in the first 2 games," Rohit said. Talking about individual performances in the group, the opener stated that players need to step up and deliver for the team irrespective of the pitches on offer. He further added that the hosts didn't adapt to the conditions as well as their Aussie counterparts. "We need to understand, no matter what the pitches are, you gotta come out and do the job. We need to keep it simple and follow the plan. It's all about everyone coming together and chipping in. We want a few guys to stand up and put their hands up to take the team through. You will falter in your plans and that's what happened in this game, we didn't adapt as well as we would have liked to," the right-hand batter expressed. Reflecting on the loss in the third Test, Rohit mentioned that the lack of runs in the first innings of the Test deflated the team's chances of winning the game while also failing to gain a sizeable lead in the second innings. "When you lose a Test match, there are a lot of things which didn't go our way, to start with we didn't bat well in the 1st innings. We understand how important it is to put runs on the board in the 1st innings and when they got the 80-90 run lead, we had to produce another inning with the bat but we were not able to do that again. We got just 75 on the board, if we batted well in the 1st innings, things would have been slightly different," he added. Speaking on India's chances of making it into the World Test Championships (WTC) final, he said, "We haven't thought about it yet (WTC final), but we have some time to think about what we need to do there (Ahmedabad Test). We need to regroup and try and understand what we did right in the first 2 games." Australia made a strong comeback in the series beating India by 9 wickets in the third Test at the Holkar Stadium to reduce the four-Test series deficit to 1-2. Nathan Lyon was declared the player of the match for his match-winning bowling spell of 10-99. With this win, the Australians have also qualified for the World Test Championship final. (ANI)
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