Capt. Rohit shares credits in Win: Team, Jadeja’s decision to declare

Mohali, March 6 (UNI) Team India Captain Rohit Sharma on Sunday said it was the team and Ravindra Jadeja’s decision to declare India’s first innings after the selfless player sent a message out to the dressing room to put Sri Lanka into bat, though he was 25 runs short of scoring his maiden double hundred in Test. “The highlight of the game was Jadeja. There was a question whether to declare or not. It was the team’s decision, Jadeja’s decision to put them in and shows how selfless he is,” he said in a post-match conference on day 3 of the first Test here. The remark comes a day after the team management led by Rohit and Head Coach Rahul Dravid came in for a heavy flak for denying India’s first innings at 574 for 8 when Jadeja was in the hunt for his maiden Test double hundred. On winning the Test match, Rohit said he didn’t think that the match would fold up in three days as it was still a good batting pitch and also helped spinners and seamers as well. “It was a good start. It was a great game of cricket from our perspective. We ticked all the boxes we wanted to. To be honest I didn’t think it was going to be that kind of a Test match which would get over in three days. It was a good batting pitch, there were some turns and some assistance for the seamers as well,” he said. Rohit credited his teammates for bowling well in tandem and keeping pressure on Sri Lankan batsmen from both ends. Overall, it was a good sign for Indian cricket and the team was happy to see big individual performances, he said. “Lots of performances, landmark Test matches for Virat and we wanted to come out here and win the Test first and foremost. It was heartening to see such big individual performances,” he added. Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka captain also never thought that the game would finish by day three. The batsmen need to put their hands up and bat longer innings, he pointed out. When playing against India, Karunaratne said, one has to capitalize on starts, and it was easy to bat on this track and was every opportunity to score big. “We backed ourselves by playing the extra seamer. We thought the wicket would crack open and is going to be up and down. If we had bowled better then we could have restricted them,” he said. Karunaratne said his team was too defensive and aggressive with the bat and stressed the need to get the balance between both by rotating strike which is the formula of playing big knocks. “As a batting unit we have to put our hands up and score big. We did well for the first two sessions, but could not execute when the ball got old and those are things we need to work on,” he said.