Restrict Windies to 114 was superb from our bowling unit: Rohit Sharma

After a lamenting performance in the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup Qualifier, in which their failure resulted in two-time champions Windies not being able to make it to the ICC Men’s World Cup in India later this year, the India series came as an opportunity to regroup and make an impact. But the Indian bowling unit, devoid of three of their primary first-choice pacers, had a solid impact upfront to restrict the home side to 114. 

While Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja did the bulk of the damage, sharing seven wickets between themselves, Shardul Thakur, Hardik Pandya, and Mukesh Kumar picked up one wicket each. Rohit Sharma was pretty impressed with the effort and applauded the bowlers while admitting that the wicket deteriorated way too much - something he didn’t expect.

"To be honest, I never thought the pitch was going to play like that," Rohit said at the post-match presentation. "It had everything for seamers and spinners, and the run-scoring was quite difficult. But to restrict them to that score was a superb effort from our bowling unit.

"We never thought we would lose five wickets but it was good to give some game time to many of those ODI guys who have just come in. But firstly, it was important for us to get into a good position. Restricting them to 115 [114] was a great effort, and I thought we had that commanding position that we needed, which is why we thought okay, we could try some of those guys who haven't played a lot of cricket in a while and give them a go.

"I don't know when they will get time moving forward, so whenever we get an opportunity like that, we will try to accommodate all these guys."

Mukesh Kumar had been a terrific performer in first-class cricket and duly made his Test debut against the Windies, but his ODI selection was always going to raise some eyebrows. With only 26 wickets to his name in the List A format, he never had the record to back his performance, but in the opening ODI of the series, he had his time under the Sun to dismiss Alick Athanaze. 

"Mukesh has been brilliant," Rohit said. "Even in the Test series we saw he can swing the new ball, has got a bit of pace, and is quite consistent as well. So we want to see what he has to offer. I haven't seen much of him in domestic cricket either, so it was good to see him playing with the white ball as well."