Vaibhav Tripathi
After India slipped to a crushing 209-run loss in the World Test Championship final, Rohit Sharma pointed out that Australian batters’ ability to wade through tricky sessions in the first first innings turned out to be the difference between the two sides.
India, who opted to bowl, in good conditions for pace bowling, couldn’t exactly make full use of it. At 76 for 3, India still had a window of opportunity to take ascendancy. However, at that juncture, Travis Head (163) and Steven Smith (121) took the game away from India’s grasp with a game-breaking stand.
“I thought we started well with winning the toss, putting them to bat in those conditions,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation. “We bowled well in the first session and then we let ourselves down with how we bowled. Got to give credit to the Australian batters. Head came in and played really well along with Steven Smith. That just took us off guard a little bit.
“We knew it was always hard to comeback, but we put up a good show. We fought till the end. We’ve worked hard for all those four years. Playing two finals is honestly a good achievement for us. But we’d like to go a mile ahead as well. You can’t take the credit away from what we’ve done in those last two years to come here. Great effort from the entire unit. Unfortunate that we couldn’t go on and win the final but we’ll keep our heads high and fight. (Crowd support) It’s been brilliant. They’ve gotten behind the time. I’d like to thank each one of them. They were cheering for every run and every wicket.”