Indore. India captain Rohit Sharma admitted that there is still a lot of room for improvement in his bowling and he will have to look at various options after a 49-run loss against South Africa in the third and final T20 International here on Tuesday. Riley Rosseau scored an unbeaten 100 off 48 balls with eight sixes and seven fours, apart from 90 for the second wicket with De Kock (68) and 87 for the third wicket with Tristan Stubbs (23) to help South Africa posted a mammoth score of 227 runs for three wickets.
The Indian team in reply lost wickets at regular intervals and the team never looked in a position to chase the target and were eventually bundled out for 178 runs in 18.3 overs. Dinesh Karthik scored 46 runs for India. Apart from them, only Deepak Chahar (31), Rishabh Pant (27) and Umesh Yadav (20 not out) could touch the 20-run mark. Dwayne Pretorius took three wickets for 26 runs for South Africa. Keshav Maharaj (2 for 34), Wayne Parnell (2 for 41) and Lungi Ngidi (2 for 51) played well with them, picking up two wickets each.
The Indian captain said after the match, “As a team, we said from the beginning that whatever the outcome, there is always room for improvement. Even if we do well in all three departments, we want to keep getting better.”
Rohit said, “It is a matter of concern, we have to look at our bowling to see what other options we can get in the powerplay, middle overs and death overs. We were playing against two world class teams. We must have sat down and thought about what we could do better. It will be challenging and we need to find answers while working in this direction.” Rohit said that more clarity is needed on what the players want to achieve.
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“The players need a lot more clarity on what they want to achieve and it’s my job to make sure that happens,” he said. We want to continue to do so.” South Africa captain Temba Bavuma, who lost the first two matches of the series, admitted that such a win would boost the team’s confidence.
“Winning like this is very important for our confidence. There were a lot of positives to this match. If we look back, our batting didn’t do much in the first match. We could not adjust to the circumstances.”
Bavuma said, “In the second match, we had plans which we did not execute. Today we were very clear about the plans and what we were trying to do.” (agency)