Shubman Gill made his debut as ODI captain of the India National Cricket Team in the first match of the three-match series against the Australia National Cricket Team on Sunday, October 19.
The exciting match between the Shubman Gill-led India National Cricket Team and the Mitchell Marsh-led Australia National Cricket Team was organized at the Perth Stadium.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli fail in comeback match
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s comebacks in international cricket ended on a sour note as the duo failed to perform well in tough batting conditions.
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Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have become single-format players after retiring from Test and T20I cricket, and they will only be in action in 50-over matches, which are played very rarely these days.
Kohli and Rohit worked very hard on their fitness and batting ahead of the Australia tour, and this development was confirmed by Dinesh Karthik and Abhishek Nayar.
Rohit lost 8-10 kilograms to get into top shape, while Kohli ensured he retained the ‘fittest cricketer’ tag by working on his body while away from competitive cricket action.
When today’s batting greats landed in Perth, they hit the nets quickly to ensure they acclimatized to Australian conditions before the series.
Kohli looked very sharp in the first net session itself. It didn’t look like he was away from the match for long periods of time, and he timed his shots into the net to perfection.
However, that was not the case with Rohit Sharma, who initially looked scratchy on the field. He didn’t look that good at the start, but after spending some time in the middle he found his rhythm and started to look good.
Meanwhile, the batting legends’ training and hard work went in vain as they both failed to score in the ODI series opener. Rohit Sharma returned with scores of 8 runs off 14 balls while Virat Kohli bagged a duck.
On the fourth ball of the 4th over, Rohit beat a delivery from Josh Hazlewood to Matt Renshaw, while Virat Kohli played a drive off Mitchell Starc into the hands of Cooper Connolly.
When you lose three wickets in the powerplay, you always try to play catch-up – Shubman Gill
India could only post 136/9 on the board while batting, and Australia were given a target of 131 runs to chase in a match of 26 over per side. The Mitchell Marsh-led side chased down the target with 29 balls remaining to win the match by 7 wickets.
During the post-match presentation ceremony, Shubman Gill laid the blame on himself, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli for India’s poor show with the bat. He stated:
“When you lose three wickets in the powerplay you always try to play a catch-up game (because of the rain delays and the bad start). Lots of lessons for us from this match and lots of positives for us too.
We were very pleased with that – Shubman Gill
Shubman Gill further said that he was quite satisfied with the way bowlers performed while chasing a small score and thanked Indian fans for turning out in large numbers. He said:
“We defended 130 and we didn’t take the match to the end, but quite deep. We were very satisfied with that.
“We’re very lucky (in terms of crowd support). The fans turned up in big numbers and hopefully they can cheer us on in Adelaide too.”
Also read: Gautam Gambhir confronts Shubman Gill in Perth after he joins Virat Kohli in shameful captaincy list
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