Pant opening was a one-off experiment: Rohit

Indian captain Rohit Sharma said that opening with Rishabh Pant was a one-off experiment and confirmed that regular opener Shikhar Dhawan will return for the final ODI against West Indies. Pant, who usually bats in the middle order, opened the innings with Rohit in the second ODI at Ahmedabad and scored 18 off 34 balls.

"I have been asked to do different things, so this was different. People will be happy seeing Rishabh open then, but yeah it is not permanent," Rohit said at the post-match presentation on Wednesday.

"We will get Shikhar back next game, and he needs some game time. It is not always the results. We wanted to try it one game," he added.

The Indian skipper said that the team is ready is risk few things in order to figure out their batting composition.

"We don't mind losing a few games trying out a few things. Because it is important to look at the long term goals. We will see what works out well for the team combination," he said.

With India three down for 43 runs, Suryakumar Yadav and KL Rahul added 89 runs for the fourth wicket which laid the foundation for India's score of 237/9 in 50 overs. Rohit praised Yadav who made 64 off 83 balls and Rahul for his versatility batting across the order.

"The partnership between Rahul and Surya had a lot of maturity. We got to a respectable total in the end. We knew we could fight it out. The entire unit came out and bowled superbly. It is important for these guys to bat under pressure and that is how you will judge their character.

"Surya had to take his time and understand what the team wants from him. KL also batted superbly as he is consistently up and down in the order," Rohit said.

Rohit also lavished praise on Prasidh Krishna who set up the 44-run win with a sensational 4-12 in his nine overs which included three maidens.

"I have never seen a spell like that in India for a long time now. Bowled with a lot of pace and kept it going. The others complimented him. When you have five bowlers and Deepak being sixth, you always need to keep rotating the bowlers," he said.

Windies' stand-in skipper Nicholas Pooran felt that lack of partnerships hurt the team.

"With the bat, we didn't build partnerships. We kept losing wickets at regular intervals. We need to continue to be aggressive," Pooran admitted.

"We did a good job with the ball and hopefully we can do the same in the final game. And also do better with the bat."

Pooran praised allrounder Odean Smith who replaced regular skipper Kieron Pollard and scored 24 off 20 balls as well claiming 2-29 with the ball.

"Pollard is a tough and big guy. Smith is a strong guy. He is a little inexperienced but sky is the limit for him," he said.