Pakistan Captain Sarfraz Ahmed rue dropping catches of India's two best batsmen - Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan - in his side's defense of 238 in the Super 4 clash against the arch-rivals on Sunday, September 23.
Sarfraz reflected on his side's disappointing overall performance and feels that even though his team failed to put up good enough runs on the board, they didn't help the cause further by dropping chances and not building any pressure at all with the ball.
Deciding to bat first in Dubai, Pakistan failed to get going at all against a world class limited overs attack and could only manage 237/7 in their 50 overs. Although Shoaib Malik, again, played a superb knock of 78 from 90 balls, it was never going to be enough to bridge the gap between two sides.
This is when the Indian openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan scored 111* and 119 respectively and simply dominated their way through to another brilliant Indian win.
"We made it tough for ourselves by dropping those catches. We were 20-25 runs short and if we would have held on to our catches we could have possibly made things interesting," said Sarfraz at the post-match presentation ceremony and said, "The boys are doing all the hard work but they're not able to take those crucial catches. The wicket was a bit difficult to play on in the afternoon as the cracks had widened up. Wasn't easy for a new batsman walking in. Had we got early wickets, this chase would have been certainly difficult,"
He added, "We have been losing a lot of wickets in the early overs and hence it becomes difficult to recover from such situations." and praised the opponent by saying, "The way they batted, all credit to them. Rohit and Dhawan were exceptional. They have shown better skills as compared to us,"
Looking forward to what is now a virtual semi-final between his side and Bangladesh on September 26 for a place in the final against India, Sarfraz signed off by emphasizing, "We need to work a lot on our skill level if at all we want to get into the final. It's a do-or-die match against Bangladesh, hopefully, we'll come out on top,"
(Inputs from India Today)
