“Honestly, the result was not what we wanted,” Rohit said in the post-match presentation, “and we know that today we were not good enough. But I am very proud of the team, of how we played from the first match.” It wasn’t our day, we tried everything we could on our part but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Honestly, 20-30 [runs] more would have been good. We spoke between 25 and 30 overs when KL and Virat were batting. I thought when they were batting they were forming a good partnership and then we just needed to bat as long as possible. We were looking at 270-280 at that time, but then we kept losing wickets. We couldn’t form a great partnership there, and that’s exactly what Australia did to win the match. They made a great partnership after those three [early] windows.”
Despite scoring quickly in the first powerplay, thanks largely to Rohit himself, and being 81 for 3 in the 11th over, India slowed down considerably in the middle overs, hitting just two fours from overs 11 to 40 and not a single six. Rahul and Kohli were rebuilding after the early losses, making 67 off 108 before Pat Cummins dismissed Kohli. India would lose their last five wickets for just 37 runs. The total of 240 was India’s second-lowest in this World Cup while batting first, and came after it had amassed scores of 397, 410, 326 and 357 while batting first in its previous four games.
Australia got off to a nervy start in swinging conditions under lights, losing David Warner, Mitchell Marsh and Steven Smith in the first seven overs to finish 47 for 3. But once the balls lost some of their luster, they slid nicely towards bat and Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne avoided further setbacks with a century stand dominated by Head.
Rohit said just one more quick wicket could have opened the game.
“When you have 240 on the board, you want to take wickets as soon as possible, and we did that,” he said. “But you have to give credit to Head and Marnus, they put together a great partnership and took us completely out of the game. “But again, we tried everything we could, but I thought the wicket got a little better for batting under the lights.
“We knew under the lights it would be a little bit better. I don’t want to give that as an excuse, we didn’t bat well enough to put enough runs on the board. And then up front we got those three wickets and we thought with another wicket we could open the game, but again, credit to those two guys in the middle for putting together that great partnership.”