Saba Karim responded to the query on India’s strike rate on Day 2, reminding what Rohit Sharma had said a few days earlier in the pre-match press conference.
Team India continued their dominating show in the fifth and final Test match of the series against England as captain Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill notched up their respective centuries to drive the first innings lead over 200 runs in Dharamsala. Amid the stellar show from the two top-order batters, who rather brought up their centuries at a quick rate, former England cricketer Owais Shah was left wondering over the reason behind India. Ex-India cricketer Saba Karim brutally responded to the query, reminding what Rohit had said a few days earlier in the pre-match press conference.
“There was a guy called Rishabh Pant in our team, probably Ben Duckett hasn’t seen him play,” the Indian skipper had said.
Responding to Shah’s statement on air on Friday in stirring fashion, Karim recalled Rohit’s remark. He said: “Wahi jawab dun jo Rohit Sharma ne Kahan tha ke aaplogon ne Rishabh Pant ko batting karte hue dekha nahi hai (should I respond the same way Rohit did, saying you guys have not seen Rishabh Pant bat)?”
There have been a lot of conversations on England’s Baz ball approach and whether it should be applied to all situations. Amid the rising criticism from veteran England cricketers on this aggressive strategy, Rohit admitted that he never managed to truly understand the concept that is Baz ball.
“I honestly don’t know what [Baz ball] means, whether it is to go and strike, whether it is to go and defend and wait for the loose ball,” the India opener had said.
“I have not seen any wild swinging from anyone, so I don’t know exactly what this term means. But, yeah, clearly they have played better cricket from what they played the last time they were here. And you got to give credit to two of their batters who got big hundreds there and played well. They applied their method to get some success and they got it. But other than that I don’t know what it means,” he added.
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