Rohit Sharma’s stunning hundred set the base for India’s thrashing of Afghanistan in their second match of the world cup 2023, played in Delhi. Rohit blasted 131 off 84 before Virat Kohli took India home with an unbeaten half-century. India chased down 273 in just 35 overs. With this win, India have jumped to the second spot in the points table.
Jasprit Bumrah returned figures of 4 for 39 in 10 overs to help India restrict Afghanistan to 272/8 in 50 overs. Hashmatullah Shahidi and Azmatullah Omarzai scored half-centuries and stitched a 121-run stand for the 4th wicket to rescue the innings after a top-order collapse.
Rohit Sharma, India captain, said, ‘Was a good win for us, very important to get that momentum at the start of the tournament. It is about absorbing pressure and taking the right decision on the field. There will be a spell from the opposition where you will have to absorb pressure. Leading up to the tournament we had played such games. You have got players with different skill sets in our team. They bring different attributes of the game to the team and it puts you in good positions as a team when you have that. We have got guys who can play fearless cricket with bat and guys who can absorb like the last game. (Asked about playing Pakistan and the talk around it) For us it’s crucial that we don’t worry about external factors and just look at things we can control. We just need to show up and do well. Things like what the pitch is like, what combo we can play is what we can control. What happens outside we won’t be worried about it. It’s just about focusing on what we can do as players and how we can perform.’
Hashmatullah Shahidi, Afghanistan captain, said,: We had in mind that India’s batting lineup is long, 300 was on our mind but unfortunately we lost too many wickets. The surface was good. We wanted to score more runs and put pressure on the opposition. Back-to-back wickets was the reason we didn’t score more runs. After losing 3 wickets I was talking to Azmatullah – Don’t worry about dots, we will convert later. Our aim was to build a partnership. We have seven more games, looking forward to those games. Hopefully we learn from our mistakes and we will work on it.