In the first ODI in Mumbai, Starc ran through India’s top order with a flurry of three wickets and in the second game in Visakhapatnam, the setter fired Indian openers Rohit, Shubman Gill and No. 4 batters and 5 Suryakumar Yadav and KL Rahul respectively.
Indian batting order is dominated by right-handers and fast left-arm likes Mohammad Amir, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Trent Boult have hurt India badly in the past. But Rohit said the team’s management needn’t worry about that right now.
“When you have a quality bowler in opposition, he is bound to take wickets. He does his best to bring out your best players. Whether it is a left arm or a right arm, they will have wickets. The right-hand men also troubled us, nobody talks about that,” Rohit told the media after the second ODI here.
“We don’t look too much into the left arm or the right arm – wickets are wickets. If you lose wickets, that’s a concern. We’ll be looking at all kinds of things: how we’re doing, what we need to do, how we can come up with better plans, better methods against the tailors.
India had two southpaws in the batting lineup – Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel – who could have been ordered to face left-hander Starc, but Rohit said such a move could have gone either way .
“Looking back, if you think about it, it’s a possibility. This is a game where something can work for you and something won’t. If Jadeja or Axar or any other southpaw would have come up the order and would have come out, then things would have been said a little differently. That’s how this game works, I know,” the captain said.
“When things don’t happen, there are a lot of thoughts that can come. But we try to get the best players in the middle to go and take on this challenge. It didn’t work out today for us, maybe Maybe it won’t be the same in Chennai, who knows,” he added.
He said the top order struggled “a bit” in just two games.
“You know, the last six ODIs, if I remember a lot of the top (batsmen) had some big runs. When we really need to look into that, we’ll definitely do that.”
With the series now stabilized at 1-1 with one game to play, both teams will travel to Chennai for the deciding game which will be played at M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Tuesday.
(With PTI entries)
