IND vs SA, 3rd T20I: Rohit Sharma and co. in their final before the World Cup lost to Temba Bavuma's South Africa by a margin of 49 runs. The Indian team is scheduled to board the flight to Australia on October 6, 2022, but there are certain areas where the problem lies, especially their bowling. The Indian team in the absence of Bumrah has a serious headache, a headache to contain the opposition batters and suffocate them from runs.
In the final T20I against Australia, India had decided to rest both Virat Kohli and KL Rahul. India opened with both Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer was slated to follow them at number 3. The South African team had everything to play for and they did turn up for the game with great intent. Rilee Rossouw took the Indian bowlers to the cleaners as he smashed a 48-ball ton. Rossouw at a strike rate of 208.33 smashed 7 boundaries and 8 sixes. Courtesy of Rossouw's 100, South Africa reached a total of 227 at the end of 20 overs. India tried to go all blazing but kept losing wickets at regular intervals. Pant blazingly started the Indian innings but couldn't continue his fireworks for much longer. On the other hand, Dinesh Karthik tried to dominate the game with his stellar 46 off 21 balls.
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India fell short of South Africa's 178 by a margin of 49 runs. Rohit Sharma, the skipper of the Indian side later said that the team needs to work on a few areas, especially the bowling department.
Rohit further added:
As a team, we said it at the beginning no matter what happens about the result, there's always room for improvement. Even if we do well in all three departments, we want to keep getting better. Areas of concern, we have to look at our bowling, and what more options we can find in the powerplay, middle, and death. We were playing two quality sides, have to go back and see what better we can do. It will be challenging and we need to find answers, still working towards that. A lot of the guys haven't been to Australia, which is why we wanted to go early. Play on some bouncy pitches in Perth and see what we can do there. Out of the 15, only 7-8 have been there before, so wanted to make an effort to go there early.
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The Indian team will now brace itself for the World Cup challenge as they take on Pakistan on October 23, 2022, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
(Inputs from PTI)
