In the absence of the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav and Shubman Gill, the Indian team had a lot of new faces for the South Africa ODI series.
India dominated South Africa with an iron fist in the first ODI, but their luck turned on its head in the third over of the series, as the home team cruised to an eight-wicket win. Batting first was not easy for the Indian team as the South African bowlers were immediately at home in friendly conditions despite KL Rahul and S Sai Sudharsan trying to nullify the swing on display.
Sudharsan, who scored a fifty on debut, backed it up with another 62, while skipper Rahul provided 56, but soon after the partnership was broken, the Indian batting fell like a pack of cards. Rahul stated that the chase could have been a tough ask for the Saffers had the duo been able to hang on longer and perhaps have added another 50 runs to the board.
“We probably should have won the toss, there was a little bit of help at the wicket in the first innings. It was a tough wicket, but having said that, Sai and I are ready. If we had continued on our path and made a big 100, we could have got 50-60 more runs.” And those are the lessons we will learn from here.“If we had got 240, it would have been good but unfortunately, we lost wickets at regular intervals and they got help from the wickets,” Rahul said in his post-match presentation.
This was Team India’s first ODI series after losing the World Cup final and the team clearly took a completely different approach. In the absence of the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav and Shubman Gill, the Indian team had a lot of new faces. Rahul said that he trusted individual players to come up with their game plans and as a captain, he supported the ideas to become good.
“We trust in everyone’s games and everyone’s game plan and what they feel comfortable with – that’s what we tell them; there’s no right or wrong in cricket, and you trust the players to make their own game plans.
“There was little help in the first 10 overs and we batted a lot, didn’t hold on to it; if we had taken that, we could have put pressure on them. We leave what’s happening on the ground and try to focus on what’s next,” Rahul added.