India suffered the loss to Australia in the 3rd ODI by 21 runs to eventually lose the three-match ODI series by 1-2. Skipper Rohit Sharma spoke about Team India's batting during the game in Chennai on Wednesday. According to Rohit, their failure to build partnerships was the reason for India's downfall in the game.
The men in blue were bundled out for 248 in the 50th over despite being in the chase for most of the time. Virat Kohli hit a wonderful fifty, while the openers and middle-order contributed. But India lost key wickets at crucial moments and that took the match away from the hosts. Adam Zampa proved to be a big threat with his four-wicket haul. He took the crucial wickets of Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja which proved to be match-turning. Shami inspired a bit of a fightback with a four and a six but it was way too much as India couldn't chase the target of 270 runs.
"I don't think it was too many runs (269). The wicket was a little challenging towards the second half. I don't think we batted well. Partnerships are crucial, and we failed to do that today," Sharma said.
"Sometimes you need to apply yourself and give yourself a chance. It was important for one batter to carry on and take the game deep. But all of us were t rying our best; it just didn't happen, he added.
Notably, India had a world record of being unbeaten at home for 25 consecutive series across all formats since 2019. This is their first series loss against any team at home in four years. The last team to beat India in India was Australia, who won the three-match ODI series by 3-2 in January 2019. However, Rohit feels that the nine home ODIs since January have ensured plenty of positives for the side.
"The nine ODIs we have played since January, we can take a lot of positives from that," he said.
"We need to understand where we need to improve. It's a collective failure, we can take a lot of learnings from this series. Credit to the Australians. Both the spinners applied the pressure and so did their seamers," Sharma added.
