India’s captain Rohit Sharma on Friday criticised his squad for lacking bravery and effort in the third Test against Australia here, calling the nine-wicket rout “one strange game,” notwithstanding his comments. Australia came back forcefully to clinch a spectacular win and secure their spot in the World Test Championship (WTC) final on a rank turner at the Holkar Stadium despite trailing the series 0-2 and having given up the Border-Gavaskar trophy.
“When you are playing on challenging pitches you have to bowl. We allowed their bowlers to bowl in one spot. Not to take any credit away from their bowlers, Nathan Lyon especially. We had to try and be brave, which I think we were not,” Rohit said at the presentation ceremony. Lyon returned excellent figures of 8/64 in India’s second innings to pave the way for Australia’s victory.
“One odd game can happen like that where things don’t come together, but even then you need players to come together and chip in. We wanted a few guys to stand up but it didn’t happen. We were slightly behind and we did not apply ourselves the way we would have liked to,” he added. Rohit and Co. have not started thinking about the fourth Test in Ahmedabad but he said the team will need to quickly regroup after the heavy defeat.
“When you lose a Test match, there’s a lot of things that didn’t go our way. To start with, we didn’t bat well in the first innings. We understand how important it is to put runs on the board in the first innings. And obviously when they got a 80-90 run lead, we needed to put in a big performance with the bat but we couldn’t do that.
“Honestly, we haven’t thought about it (Ahmedabad Test) yet. We just finished this Test now so we need to regroup and try. We need to understand that we need to improve as a team.” The hosts were bowled out for 163 in their second innings, leaving Australia with a target of just 76 runs. One of the biggest architects of the Australian win is seasoned off-spinner Nathan Lyon, who grabbed eight wickets in the Indian second innings on day two of the match.