Asia Cup: Would try to take the game on, but important to read situations, conditions well, says Rohit Sharma

Pallekele, Sept 1: With the Sri Lanka-Bangladesh game of the Asia Cup in the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium offering a lot of help to the bowlers, India captain Rohit Sharma stated that the side is keen to take the attacking route, but wants to read situations and circumstances for applying themselves a little longer in the 50-over format.

India will be opening their Asia Cup campaign against archrivals Pakistan on Saturday, and Rohit, along with other Indian batters like Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja will be tested by Pakistan’s bowling line-up, chiefly their pace bowling line-up of Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah and Haris Rauf.

"All sorts of combinations available looking at how the game was played yesterday. We saw a bit of swing, spin and everything and that will always challenge the batters. Luckily, we have got experience in our batting line-up, and I will let them play accordingly as per their experience."

"Yes, I have said that we would try to take the game on, but it's important to read the situations and conditions well because, in the 50-over format, you have to apply a little more than 20-over cricket and apply for a little longer."

"Being aggressive is important but at the same time, the players will be allowed to play their game and let them make their decisions in the middle because a lot of them are quite experienced and have played in this kind of conditions. So, they know exactly what sort of gameplan and mindset they need to keep and prepare for against every opposition," said Rohit in the pre-match press conference.

From India’s last ODI series against the West Indies in July, Iyer returns after recovering from a lower back injury, so as did Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami and Prasidh Krishna. Rohit admitted picking the playing eleven would be a challenging task for the team management and prayed for injuries to stay away from the side till the World Cup at home. 

"I would probably be in this kind of headache rather than having no headache. It’s always nice to have a good pool of players to choose from; it also bodes nice for the team environment to have such kind of competition as well and so many players being available."

"I know that when all these guys are available and are at their best, it becomes quite a challenging task for us to be in the playing eleven and it’s good to have such kind of competition and headaches around."

"I hope that all the 15 and 18 we have now here stay fresh and fit throughout the tournament and the next two months. But speaking of Asia Cup, we hope that there are no injury concerns and shouldn’t be, as that will be a good sign for us moving forward."

Speaking of his own approach with the bat, Rohit stated his purpose will be to carry the team’s innings for long and set a balance in terms of risk-taking. Since topping the 2019 Men’s ODI World Cup run-charts with 648 runs and five hundreds, Rohit has made 1179 runs in 29 matches, hitting three hundreds and six fifties at a strike rate of 101.02, higher from 89.97 in his overall career.

"It is very important to use that experience of playing cricket for so many years now. I will be trying to do what the team needs from me. I have played cricket with a very high-risk approach in the last two years. I have to balance between when to take a risk and when the risk has not to be taken when it comes to ODIs."

"As a top-order batter, it's my very big responsibility to set the platform for the team and get the team to a good situation. I will try that I won't want to throw away my wicket easily when in rhythm. Haven't thought much about that while playing in the last one and a half years as I played with a lot of risks. But bringing that balance around risk is necessary here, and it's required, so will try to get it."