Admitting that there are no excuses to give after India almost were left stunned by Hong Kong a day ago, stand-in skipper Rohit Sharma said that his team will pick themselves up and learn from their mistakes.
“We always knew it was not going to be easy. There are no excuses. We made our mistakes. This tournament is all about learning and these guys will learn. But in the end, the team pulled it back,” said Rohit, as quoted by Cricket Next.
The stand-in captain had words of praise for Shikhar Dhawan and Ambati Rayudu, whose knocks propelled India to 285 at the end of the innings.
“When the going gets tough, a couple of the characters did well. This will be a great learning curve for the bowling group. Shikhar was a great positive. It was not easy out there. Amabati got a brilliant fifty as well,” said Rohit.
It was debutant Khaleel Ahmed whose figures of 3/48 was the best for India on the day after The Hong Kong openers threatened to take away the game from the defending champions with a well-built 174 run stand.
Lauding the efforts of the left-arm pacer, Rohit said, “Khaleel is a very exciting player to have in our squad. Today, he showed that despite not starting well he found a way to come back and got his rewards in the end.”
Earlier in the day, it was Dhawan who stroked his way to a classy 127 and with Rayudu’s 60 runs, India posted 285 runs on the board. But they were taken aback by the Hong Kong openers whose 174-run opening stand almost got them to clinch an upset over the defending champions.
Dhawa, much like many in the Indian camp perhaps didn’t see this coming from the minnows and said the pitch hardly offered any help for the bowlers.
“There wasn’t much of a swing or seam on the wicket,” the left-hander said.
“Not that we didn’t know much about Hong Kong, of course, we watch videos where the player’s batting or bowling,” he stated further.
He further went on to add, “Some of our bowlers were playing after a long time. Like Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) coming after a break, Shardul (Thakur) was in England but he didn’t play a match for two months. So it takes time to get into the rhythm as well. And at the same time, Khaleel bowled really well. Of course we couldn’t get the wicket at the start but later on the way, we came back in the game and the way our fast bowlers or spinners as well, they both took wickets, that was good.”
Nizakat Khan along with skipper Anshuman Rath absorbed the pressure and threatened to run away with the game but Dhawan felt that all India needed was just one wicket.
“We knew that once we get the top-order wickets, we can come back in the game. Obviously, they gave a decent fight and it is always good to learn from every match,” he said. “It’s good that we played this game and built pressure. Tomorrow (against Pakistan) is going to be a big pressure game so that pressure (against Hong Kong) will actually help tomorrow,” he said.