India captain Rohit Sharma faced questions from the journalists on the eve of the high voltage clash against Pakistan in the ongoing Asia Cup 2023, as the two teams will meet on September 2nd in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Pakistan already has a huge win under its belt as they hammered Nepal in the tournament opener in Multan on August 30.
Both the teams had their practice session in Pallekele stadium and Rohit Sharma said his batters will have to rely on their rich experience to counter Pakistan's potent pace trio of Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf, and Naseem Shah.
“We don’t have Shaheen, Naseem, and Rauf in our nets. We practice with the bowlers we have. They are all quality bowlers. We just have to use our experience to play them tomorrow," Rohit said in a presser.
With a few key players entering the Asia Cup after their recent recovery from injuries, Rohit asserted that the tournament is not a fitness test and the team will have to put its game face on. Shreyas Iyer, Jasprit Bumrah, and Prasidh Krishna are coming back from their respective injuries.
“By no means, this (Asia Cup 2023) is a fitness test. This tournament is played between the top six Asian teams. So, it's a very big tournament. The fitness test, and fitness camp…. all that was done in Bangalore. Now, we have to go ahead and get our game face on and see what we can achieve in this (tournament),” he added.
After a considerable time, India will enter a tournament with a near-full squad, barring injured KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant. Rohit said it’s good to have several players to choose from for an important tournament.
“I would probably have this kind of headache, rather than having no headache. It's always nice to have a good pool of players to choose from, and to have such kind of competition as well. It's going to be quite a challenging task for us to make the playing 11. But I want to make sure that we have no injury concerns and that will be a good sign for us to move forward.
Look, all sorts of combinations are available. Looking at how the game was played yesterday (Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka), a bit of swing, a bit of spin, we saw everything. It is always challenging for the batters. Luckily, we've got experience in our batting lineup. I will let that experience come and play accordingly,” he said.
Rohit said it will be important for batsmen to play according to the situation.
“This is not a T20 game so we need to apply a bit longer. So, the whole idea is to be aggressive and be an individual to allow them to play their game. A lot of them are quite experienced and have played in these types of conditions.
So, they know exactly what sort of game plan and what kind of mindset they need to have when they're playing against a quality opposition,” added Rohit.
(PTI inputs)
