“We tried everything…”
It was a phrase used twice by Rohit Sharma at the post-match presentation after India lost the World Cup final to Australia by six wickets.
“We were not good enough today,” Rohit said, reflecting on the game. “But again, I think I’m really proud of the team, how we played from game one. It just wasn’t our day.
“We tried everything we could from our side. But yeah, it wasn’t supposed to be.”
India’s winning juggernaut, which saw them win all their nine league games and then the semi-final in Mumbai, came to an abrupt halt at the final. Asked to bat first, the hosts struggled for momentum on a slow and dry surface in Ahmedabad and were bowled out for 240 off the last ball of the innings.
“I mean 20-30 more [runs] would have been good,” Rohit said. “We spoke around 25-30 overs when KL and Virat were batting. They were stitching a good partnership there and they just needed to bat as long as possible. We were looking at 270-280 at that point, but then we kept losing wickets. We couldn’t stitch a big partnership there. And that’s exactly what Australia did to win the game. They stitched a big partnership after those three wickets.”
Compared to 67 runs between KL Rahul and Virat Kohli for the fourth wicket, Australia correspondingly added 192 runs after losing three early wickets just like India.
“When you have 240 on the board, you want to take wickets as early as possible and we did that but then again, credit to those two guys in the middle – Travis and Marnus, they stitched up a big partnership and put us completely out of the game,” Rohit said.
“But again, we tried everything we could, you know, but I thought the wicket got slightly better to bat under the lights.”
With the onset of dew, the pitch started to play better later in the innings but Rohit said that he didn’t want to use it as an “excuse” for India’s loss. After all, Rohit had revealed at the toss that India too were looking to bat first and put a big total on the board in the big final.
“We knew under the lights, it would be slightly better but again, we don’t want to give that as an excuse. We didn’t bat well enough to put enough runs on the board. And then with the seamers upfront, we got those three wickets where we thought another wicket can open up the game but again, credit to those two guys in the middle for stretching that big partnership.”
