Indian skipper Rohit Sharma was disappointed with the team’s back-to-back batting failures in the middle overs against Sri Lanka in the ongoing one-day series.
Having missed a chance to win the first match which ended in a tie, India suffered another middle-order collapse in the second game as the team went down by 32 runs.
Chasing 241, India were comfortably placed at 97 for one in 14 overs on the back of Rohit’s 64 off 44 balls.
But spinner Jeffrey Vandersay (10-0-33-6) weaved magic, left India batters speechless and handed Sri Lanka a 1-0 lead ahead of Wednesday’s final match of the series.
“When you lose a game, everything hurts. It is not just about those 10 overs (of the first powerplay). You have to play consistent cricket and we failed to do that today,” Rohit said.
“I am a little disappointed but these things happen. You have to adapt to what is in front of you. With the left and right combination, we felt it will be easier to rotate strike. Credit to Jeffrey, he got six wickets.”
But Rohit admitted that it was a difficult pitch to bat on, especially against the slow bowlers.
“The reason I got 64 is because of the way I batted. When I am batting like that, there is a lot of risks taken. If you do not cross the line, you always feel disappointed,” he said.
“I do not want to compromise on my intent. We understand the nature of this surface, it gets really tough in the middle overs. You have to try to get as many as possible in the powerplay.
“We were not good enough. Do not want to look too much into how we played. But there will be talks about our batting in the middle overs.”