Rohit Sharma disappointed with loss but glad to start series with a century

Rohit’s century went in vain

Indian cricketer Rohit Sharma said that the team will regroup and come stronger in the next match against the touring South African team. India lost the first Twenty20 international of the 3-match series by 7 wickets.

Rohit scored a prolific 106 runs off just 66 deliveries which included 12 boundaries and five huge sixes. Even after posting a mammoth target of 200 runs, the visitors chased it down easily courtesy JP Duminy’s late fire 68 off 34 balls.

While speaking to the bcci.tv in an after match interview, Rohit said: "It is always important to start a series well. I did have that in my mind when I went out to bat. My focus was on getting some runs in the very first game since it sets the tone for the rest of the series. I feel it is a good start. Obviously disappointed with the loss but we have to regroup as soon as we can and come back really strong.

"Any hundred you get for your country in any format it is always special and I will cherish this. Unfortunately, it didn't come in a winning cause which is disappointing. It doesn't matter how many runs you score. You are not happy if your team doesn't win at the end of the day. But personally, I felt good batting out there," he added.

After winning the toss, South Africa asked India to bat first on the pitch where always due factor come in the second innings. India had a shaky start especially the wicket of Shikhar Dhawan totally silenced the cheer going across for India.

It was Rohit who started taking risk got through from the rough phase after the wicket. Later on, everything looked easy and India came into the commanding position with Rohit hitting the ball all-around with his natural display of batting.

When asked about the pitch and his batting performance, he said: "We were expecting something off the pitch, but it didn't really happen. Once we got to know that the pitch was really good to bat on we really pushed hard in the middle. We always wanted to be ahead and put the pressure on the bowlers, which is exactly what happened. Personally, I just wanted to hold my shape as long as possible while batting.

“In T20 format you do at times lose your shape and you try to hit the ball too hard. I wanted to just time the ball because it was a brilliant pitch to bat on. We knew with the dew coming in, it will be hard for the bowlers bowling in the second innings. So we wanted to get to a par score and having said that we knew that a total around 170-plus would be a very decent target here."

After Dhawan got out, it was Virat Kohli who came in and dominated the proceeding with Rohit. Both the players added 138 runs for the second wicket and brought India out of trouble situation. Rohit spoke about the stand between him and Kohli, he said that it was really important for us make that partnership work for the team’s point of view.

"That century stand with Virat Kohli was really important from the team's perspective to get to a very good score. We both are natural stroke-makers and both of us like to play shots. It was an ideal platform for both of us to accelerate and keep playing our shots. What we really did well was running between the wickets and putting pressure on their bowlers whenever a new bowler would come to bowl.

“If you get a boundary in the first or the second ball when a new bowler comes to bowl, you always put a lot of pressure on that bowler and the captain to set fields as well. The bowler then begins to think and there are a lot of things that go on in his head at that moment. We did that successfully on most occasions and that plan worked for us. We will try and continue to do that," he concluded.