India skipper Rohit Sharma said the team management knew that the two matches in the group stage of Asia Cup 2023 wouldn't give them a clear picture of the combination for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023, slated to be held in India from October 5 to November 19.
Rohit said India had an idea of what their World Cup squad would be like even before they landed in Sri Lanka for the continental tournament.
For the Indian captain, it's not ideal to delve into the two Group A games and pick the World Cup squad based on them.
Rohit’s comments came after India thrashed Nepal by 10 wickets (via DLS method) in Pallekele on Monday (September 4) to qualify for the Super-4 round.
India are due to announce their provisional World Cup squad on September 5. The Men in Blue had the opportunity to test things out in the two group-stage matches of Asia Cup 2023 but both of them were marred by rain.
"Look, when we came here, in the back of our mind, we knew what our 15 is going to be like. There was one or two spots that we wanted to have a look at, but we were very clear in our mind that the Asia Cup is not going to give us the complete picture of what the squad would be like, because there were only two games that we had to play. So you can't really look too much into these two games and one being washed out,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation.
“But luckily, we got a bat in the first game and we bowled in this game. That was a complete game for us. But, yeah, a lot of things that we need to still understand what we need to do as a group. We didn't play our best cricket in both our games, but I'm sure we're getting there. A lot of the guys are just coming back after a long break. I can understand a little bit. Few guys are coming back after months of being out of the game, so that can happen," he added.
While the likes of Ishan Kishan and Hardik Pandya stepped up with the bat against Pakistan, India are still sweating over the fitness of first-choice wicketkeeper-batter KL Rahul.
Notably, Rahul did not travel to Sri Lanka for the group stage as he needed more time to recover from a fresh niggle he picked up during rehabilitation at the NCA in Bengaluru.
Rohit praised Ishan and Hardik’s rescue effort against Pakistan and also called for improvement in the bowling department.
"But once we move ahead in the Super Fours, there's no room for complacency like that. We need to be on the money and we need to keep ticking those boxes, which I thought we did pretty all right in these two games that we played," he said.
"In the first game under pressure, lost four wickets Hardik and Ishan batted brilliantly to get us to a good score. And then today with the ball, I thought we were okay, not great, but fielding was below par. That is something that we had to be really looking into, something that we cannot afford to do going into tournaments like World Cup and also Asia Cup. It's a big tournament, so a lot of things for us to look at. Hopefully moving ahead, we can look into all those things."
India will next face arch-rivals Pakistan in their first Super-4 match on September 10.
