India got off to the perfect start in their Asia Cup defence after they beat arch-rivals Pakistan by five wickets in their opening match in Dubai on Sunday, August 29. Starring for them were the pacers, who restricted Pakistan to 148 runs, and then the duo of Ravindra Jadeja and Hardik Pandya, who took the game home for the side.
But the performance of the top order remains a cause of concern for India, with the trio of KL Rahul (0), Rohit Sharma (12) and Virat Kohli (35) only managing 47 runs among them. These concerns were echoed by the legendary batter and former skipper Sunil Gavaskar, who was quite unhappy with the performance of skipper Rohit and Kohli.
“Rahul played just one ball, so you can’t judge anything from that. Rohit and Kohli had the opportunity to bat for some time, they got runs. All these earlier times when people were talking about Kohli’s form, I kept on saying that he is not having any luck," Gavaskar told India Today in an exclusive interview.
“Today, he had a lot of luck, drop catches, a lot of inside edges, which went so close to the stumps, he had the luck. But he did capitalise on it and played some very fine shots. But one had expected that with the kind of start that he had, he should have got around 60-70. He got out immediately after Rohit got out. Both of them got out to forgettable shots. At that stage, those shots were not necessary as the asking rate wasn’t 19 or 20 for them to attempt sixes at that stage.
“It was required for them to get going, get to 70-80 and then maybe go for the big shots. That should be learning from this game,” added the batting great.
Kohli was dropped on 0 by Fakhar Zaman off the second ball that he faced before scoring 35 runs off 34 balls. But Rohit perished after scoring 12 runs off 18 balls. Both the batters were dismissed in successive deliveries off Nawaz, reducing India to 53 for three.
