The whole of India is still trying to process how Rohit Sharma's brigade lost the World Cup 2023 final to Australia on November 19, despite boasting an unbeaten streak throughout the tournament until the grand finale.
Australia got the better of India by six wickets in the ODI World Cup final and ended up lifting the coveted trophy for the sixth time.
Indian batters looked clueless in front of Australian tight bowling and could only muster a total of 240. Only Virat Kohli and KL Rahul struck patient fifties but they too ran out of steam and eventually surrendered to Australia's lethal bowling attack in the slow pitch. After the dismissal of Kohli, which saw Indian scoreboard reeling at 148/4, Jadeja was promoted up the batting order as he took the crease ahead of Suryakumar Yadav. But nothing worked for Team India as their innings was summed up for a paltry 240, handing Australia an easy peasy target.
Meanwhile, former India's star batter and World Cup-winner Gautam Gambhir and Pakistan legend Wasim Akram questioned Rohit Sharma's strategic change in the all-important World Cup 2023 final.
“I didn’t understand why Jadeja was sent ahead of Suryakumar Yadav. Why was he demoted to No. 7? That was nowhere the right call for me,” Gambhir told Sportskeeda.
Akram quickly added, “I mean he is playing purely as a batter there. I could have understood the move if Hardik was there in the line-up.”
“Imagine if KL Rahul as batting with a certain temp with Kohli then it makes even more sense to sent Suryakumar in and ask him to play aggressive cricket, play his natural cricket because you still have Jadeja. It is very easy to say for an expert to say that Suryakumar struggled.
“But the player’s mindset is that if he gets out the next batters are Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Siraj and Kuldeep. However, if he knows that the next batsman in is Jadeja then he would have had a different mindset. If you were not confident in Suryakumar at No. 6 then you might as well should have picked someone else,” Gambhir concluded.
Suryakumar, who is known for his explosive batting, returned to the pavilion after scoring a sluggish 18 off 28 runs.
In reply, Australia rode on Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne's exceptional knock to overhaul the target with six wickets and 42 balls to spare. When Australia were reeling at 47/3, Head (137 off 120) and Labuschagne (58 off 110) stitched a match-winning partnership of 192 runs to take Australia past finishing line. This was the second occasion when Australia defeated India in the ODI World Cup final. On the other hand, India's decade-long drought of ICC trophy only got extended.
Australia and India will next lock horns with each other in the upcoming T20I series which is slated to kick off from November 23.
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