Indian captain Rohit Sharma addressed the team’s preparations for the Champions Trophy following their victory in the first ODI against England in Nagpur. He emphasised their focus on maintaining consistent performance rather than pursuing specific goals.
India secured a four-wicket win to take a 1-0 lead in the series. The team’s performance was nearly flawless, despite losing three quick wickets near the end while chasing a modest target of 249 runs.
“Nothing specific. Overall as a team, I just want us to keep making sure that we keep doing the right things as often as possible. There is nothing specific that we want to try and achieve,” Rohit told the broadcaster after the match.
“We want to try and tick every box that is there to be ticked in terms of bowling, batting and stuff like that. So (we) pretty much managed to do that today, although I felt we shouldn’t have lost those wickets at the end.”
“It would have been good, but again, guys are trying to put pressure back on the bowlers and while doing that things like this can happen,” he said.
Rohit expressed satisfaction with the team’s performance, considering it was their first ODI in almost six months.
“I’m pretty happy because we all knew that we’re coming off from a long time playing this format so it was important for us to just regroup as quickly as possible and understand what is supposed to be done,” he said.
“This is a slightly longest format where you have time to come back into the game. When things start to go slightly away from you, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to keep going away.
You have to try and pull things back and that is what exactly what we did. A lot of credit to all the bowlers there, everyone chipped in with that performance and it was important and necessary for us to keep that going,” he said.
Axar Patel‘s performance was particularly noteworthy, scoring 52 runs off 47 balls after being promoted to number 5 in the batting order.
“We want a lefty in the middle. We know there are a couple of (England) spinners who are going to bowl into the left-handers and we wanted a left-hander to be out there,” he said.
“Axar, over the years now we’ve seen how improved he is as a cricketer especially with his bat and we got to see that again today. We were slightly under pressure at that point we needed a partnership and Gill and Axar batted really well.”
Shubman Gill, who contributed 87 runs to the victory, shared his approach to batting when India was struggling at 19/2.
“(I was) just trying to be positive. There was a little bit in it for the fast bowlers with the new ball. So the thought process was not to get too much on the back foot (and) to have a good intent and play some good cricketing shots,” he said.
