India captain Rohit Sharma touched upon the subject of the Men in Blue’s heart-breaking defeat in the final of the ICC World Cup 2023 to Australia. India, who came into the finals unbeaten, were demolished by Australia in the summit clash and won their sixth World Cup title.
The match was played in Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium and saw India batting first after Australia captain Pat Cummins won the toss.
India was 76/2 in the 10th over when Rohit Sharma fell for 47 runs in 31 balls. After that, the Indian batters went into a shell as India only managed to hit only 4 fours in the last 40 overs as they crawled to 240. Virat Kohli made 54 and KL Rahul hit 66.
In reply, Australia was reduced to 47/3 in the 7th over, but Travis Head made 137 and Marnus Labuschagne made 58* as Australia won by 6 wickets and 7 overs to spare.
In his appearance with Shreyas Iyer on the ‘The Great Indian Kapil Show’ on Netflix, Rohit Sharma indicated that the tone in the camp was fairly optimistic given that the squad had gone on to win all their games leading up to the finals and had established their groove, with all the players being in good touch.
He said,” It’s hard to say because, before the match we were in Ahmedabad two days earlier, and had our practice. The team had maintained a good momentum. As they say, the team was on autopilot. But when the finals began, we had a great start, I think Shubman Gill got out quickly. But then Virat and I had a small partnership. We were confident that we could get a good score”.
Rohit also mentioned that he believed if there was a good score on the board then the scoreboard pressure would hamper the batter’s efforts and give the side the wickets.
He highlighted, “Because whenever you are playing in the finals, I believe that displaying scores on the board in big matches puts pressure on the opposition. Even if it’s 100 runs they must score as many runs. And any team can crumble under the pressure.”
The captain also said that he feared the country would not be pleased with him following the devastating loss at home and was surprised to see the reception following the finals.
“Even I was thinking that even though the World Cup took place in our country, we still couldn’t win it, so I felt that the nation might be angry with us. That the people might be disappointed in us. But wherever I went after the World Cup finals, I only heard people praising how well we played, and they all thoroughly enjoyed watching that cricket. The result wasn’t favorable,” Rohit concluded.
