Indian pacer Shardul Thakur has revealed vice-captain Rohit Sharma’s brief yet significant advice in the crunch situation of the game that helped the Men in Blue to beat England by 8 runs in the fourth T20I to level the five-match T20I series 2-2 on Thursday (March 18) in Ahmedabad.
Thakur returned with the figures of 3-42 in his 4 overs – which were best among the Indian bowlers. He was also well supported by Bhuvneshwar Kumar (1-30) and Hardik Pandya (2-16), who used all their experience to help India restrict England to 177/8 to give the hosts a series-leveling win.
He delivered with the ball when Team India needed the most, bowling the 17th over of the innings when England were 140-4 with Ben Stokes and Eoin Morgan at the crease and took both the crucial wickets on successive balls to bring his team back into the game.
Then, the 29-year-old was given the most difficult task to defend 23 runs against a rampant Jofra Archer in the 20th over and he brilliantly did the job to take India to thrilling 8 runs win against England.
Notably, through the closing stages, Virat Kohli had to go back to the dugout to get his niggle checked and Rohit was doing his job by giving the bowlers some crucial pointers about the ground dimensions and simply asked them to back themselves and Thakur revealed the vice-captain advised him to follow his instincts.
Thakur said after the match: “I am enjoying myself, and bowling in times when batsmen are going hard at us. Hardik had some plans but Rohit just wanted me to back my instinct. He mentioned one side of the ground is shorter and just asked me to keep it in mind and asked me to apply myself.”
He also admitted that it was difficult to control the wet ball given a lot of dew on the ground, adding: “there was a lot of dew in this match, which wasn’t true of the last three matches. They were swinging hard in the last over, and it was important to bowl a couple of dot balls and then the game was sealed.”
The seamer signed off, “The dry ball worked for them, and when I tried a slow bouncer it was in the slot and it went for six. If we bowled the slow ones on the stumps it would’ve been easy to hit, so the target was to keep it away from their power zone. If the ball is drier, it’s easier to grip for the knuckle ball.”
(With ANI Inputs)
