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Praising the last over heroic of Mohammed Shami against Australia, India skipper Rohit Sharma said that he knew that the veteran pacer could play a lethal role in the match and wanted to give the star pacer the challenge to bowl last over.
A brilliant knock from KL Rahul and a three-wicket haul masterclass by Mohammed Shami helped India inflict a 6 runs defeat on Australia and bundled out the hosts for 180 in ICC T20 World Cup warm-up match here at the Gabba in Brisbane on Monday.
Mohammed Shami defended 11 runs in the final over to hand India a 6-run victory over Australia in a warm-up match.
"Mohammed Shami was brilliant. We know how lethal he can be with the ball, and we all saw what happened. He is coming back after a long time, so we wanted to give him an over. Wanted to give him a challenge and let him bowl the final over, and you saw what he did," Rohit Sharma said in the post-match presentation.
Talking about India's batting performance against the hosts, Rohit praised star India batter Suryakumar Yadav who played a knock of 50 runs in 33 balls.
"I thought we batted well, towards the end we could have added 10-15 runs more. We always want a set batter to stay till the end, Suryakumar Yadav did it, overall a great batting effort with a nice bounce, was a pitch where you can trust your shots. You got to be smart with batting on grounds like these. You can't forget to push the balls into the gaps, scoring 8-9 runs in an over can be quite an effective plan," the India skipper added.
Citing that the men in blue can improve, Sharma added,"It was a great practice game for us. There is room for improvement, but I want more consistency from the bowlers. You need to keep things simple and hit the deck hard. Overall a good game for us, they had a decent partnership and that put us under pressure."