Bangladesh was better than us in first T20: Rohit

Rohit Sharma, who leads the side in three-
match T20 series against Bangladesh in absence of regular captain Virat Kohli
heaped praise on the Tigers’ performance, stating that the visitors were
better team than them in the first match, which they lost by seven wickets.

“Winning a game is of course a great start for any team. Bangladesh as I
said previously, they can’t upset any team, they can beat any team. So that’s
what they have done and they were better than us today. They played well,”
Rohit said after the match on Sunday.

He said that they lacked in terms of decision making that cost them the
game. “We lost wicket in first over and it’s not easy after that. Pitch was
slightly soft and shot-making was not easy,” he said.

“We needed around 140-150 and that was the message. We have seen on
pitches like this before that the winning score becomes somewhere around 140-
150. Even today, we saw that 148 was a good score. We would have defended it
if we were smart on the field. We didn’t take a couple of decisions right and
that cost us. Their batsman got a 50 towards the end and that is where we
probably lacked in terms of decision making.”

When India’s overcautious approach was blamed by the former players, Rohit
defended his players, saying that they were actually smart but Bangladesh
played sensible cricket to take the game away from them.

He termed Bangladesh’s smartness in building the partnership, defying
their plan was the turning point of the game.

“If you analyze the whole game, the ball was stopping a little bit and
gripping as well so the shot-making was not easy. These are young players who
are trying to get into the squad. They need a bit of time and how to bat in
pitches like that. I wouldn’t call that as an overcautious approach I think
they were smart,” he said.

“Whatever we got was good fighting total. You need to keep taking wickets
when defending small totals. They had a very good partnership once they lost
a wicket in the first over. They had a big partnership for the second wicket
as well and that was the turning point.”

This was India’s first defeat to Bangladesh in T20 format after winning
eight matches in a row but Rohit was not keen to give the previous record a
thought.

“Those eight games, right? You are talking about when we started playing
T20s. I don’t know when was the time we started playing against them first
but it was a different team then and a different team now,” he said.

“Lots of new guys are here and there is no way we take this team lightly.
In cricket generally, we’re all students of the game. Every game is a new
game and we don’t look at the opposition when we play. It doesn’t matter
whether it is Bangladesh or Australia. We didn’t take them lightly. Record is
record but when we go out to play we never look at the record.”