A video clip gone viral on social media after the Adelaide game shows Gautam Gambhir joking with Rohit Sharma on their return to the team hotel.
“Rohit, sabko lag raha tha ki aaj farewell match tha, ek photo to lagaa do,” the head coach told Rohit in jest as the former captain managed a hearty laugh.
Rohit’s gritty 73 off 97 balls in Adelaide paved the way for a comepetitive total, though it proved to be inadequate in the end. Rohit survived a torrid spell of seam and swing bowling by Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Xavier Bartlett.
His innings has somewhat put an end to the retirement talks surrounding him, at least for the time being. However, the same cannot be said of Virat Kohli, who has
managed ducks in the two matches so far.
Saturday’s third ODI will be of interest because of two reasons. First, how both the veterans fare, especially Kohli, and if Australia will be able to pull off a whitewash against India, their first in an ODI bilateral series.
For the record, India have not lost three consecutive ODIs since a four-game slump against Sri Lanka and South Africa in 2021-22.
Sunil Gavaskar believes both the batters will remain active till the 2027 World Cup and focused on Kohli’s extraordinary numbers.
“Look, the man (Kohli) has more than 14,000 runs, 52 ODI centuries, and I think 32 Test centuries. He’s scored thousands and thousands of runs, so he’s allowed a couple of failures. Don’t read too much into what has happened... there’s plenty of cricket left,” Gavaskar said on Sports Tak.
“Maybe Sydney will see a big innings from him. Adelaide, of course, has been his favorite ground in Australia, so naturally, everyone was expecting a big one in Adelaide as well. What a wonderful ovation he got when he walked out to bat. It was truly heartwarming because the majority of the crowd were Australians...”
Shubman Gill, Kuldeep Yadav.
The twin losses haven’t been encouraging for new captain Shubman Gill. Without Hardik Pandya, India have lacked balance and they trotted out the same XI across the two games without much success. It remains to be seen if Kuldeep Yadav is given a chance in the final ODI in Sydney on Saturday.
The Sydney wicket is known to help the spinners and Kuldeep could prove to be a handful in the circumstances. Prasidh Krishna could also get a look in. It will also be interesting to see if Yashasvi Jaiswal gets to play an ODI on this tour.