‘He should have batted at No.7’- Sunil Gavaskar questions Rohit Sharma’s decision to bat at no.9 in the 2nd ODI

Despite India captain, Rohit Sharma’s late fireworks, India lost their second straight ODI series to Bangladesh. The Mumbai opener, who was forced to play at number nine due to a thumb injury, struck an unbeaten 51 off 28 balls but the visitors fell short by five runs.

The Men in Blue suffered another defeat at Dhaka at the hands of Bangladesh on Wednesday, thus losing two consecutive games in the series. With that, they have lost the 3-match ODI series already with one game to go.

Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar spoke about Rohit’s brave knock after the end of the match and he felt that Rohit could have batted at the number 7 spot rather than number 9.

“Everybody knows the quality and class of the man. And the thing now, when India came so close, is why did he not come in to bat earlier? If he was going to bat at No. 9, then he should have batted at No. 7,” Gavaskar was quoted as saying.

‘There was no need to play that shot’- Sunil Gavaskar

Gavaskar feels that if Rohit had walked in a little earlier, it would have allowed the remaining batters to play a little more calmly. He said that Axar Patel was thinking that Rohit won’t come to bat and, therefore, he ended up playing a discretional shot.

“What that could have done is, I think, Axar Patel would have played differently. Axar thought that maybe Rohit Sharma won’t bat, and therefore he played that shot. At that stage, there was no need to play that shot. Axar was batting so well, he was picking the ball well, and had he continued, you never know, the outcome could have been different. At No. 9, he almost got India to a memorable win so had he come to bat at 7, India would have had a much better chance,” Gavaskar added.

India have already lost the series and, now, they will look to win the final match in order to save the series from resulting in a 3-0 clean sweep.