Rohit Sharma, Team India Repeat Perth Show With Bat At Gabba

By: Drcricket7 Staff

Be it cricket or any other sport, nothing beats consistency. While drawing a parallel, India’s Rohit Sharma has always been associated as someone with a plenty of talent.

From the time he started opening the innings in the shorter version of the game, he evolved as a batsmen with several big hundreds. Still, Rohit wasn’t considered to be consistent enough.

Second successive century against Australia in the 2nd ODI is one such big occasion when he can tell that he can also do what the greats of the game have achieved and that is to be consistent.

After his 171 in Perth, Rohit continued from where he left off, striking the ball cleanly on a flat Gabba pitch in Brisbane that was well suited for the batsmen.

He completed his 10th ODI century and this knock of 124 was his 5th ODI ton against Australia. He was a touch luck when a caught behind appeal from the Australians went in vain just before entering the nervous nineties (89). Otherwise, it was as powerful as the Perth knock.

Ajinkya Rahane, too, played a gem of knock (80-ball 89). He was as good as Rohit today and almost single-handedly took the Indian score beyond the 300-run mark with a strike-rate of 111.25.

It was their knocks which took the Indian score to 308 for eight in 50 stipulated overs. In the previous game, the visitors had made 309 and had lost the match by 5 wickets.

In fact, India showed signs of the Perth repeat show when they scored only 31 runs between 30 to 36 overs.

Earlier, India won the toss and elected to bat on a flat Gabba deck. The visitors lost Shikhar Dhawan cheaply, but Rohit and Virat Kohli repaired the innings with a 125-run stand for the second wicket.

It was foundation on which the Rohit and Ajinkya Rahane managed to build the innings further. India could have got more runs through Kohli’s bat if he wouldn’t have gone for an ambitious second runs during his knock of 59.

In the 43rd over, Rohit got out in the most unfortunate manner when Rahane’s straight drive deflected to the stumps after touching James Faulkner’s fingers.

Thereafter, Dhoni walked into the middle to join Rahane. Together, they tried to accelerate the scoring by playing those cheesy shots and running hard, but they had to bow down in front of Aussies’ sharp fielding standards at times.

Also, the Australian bowling in the death overs wasn’t bad and whenever the Indians tried to run away with the game, the likes of Faulkner came back strongly and took those lower middle-order Indian wickets at regular intervals.

Altogether, India lost five wickets within 45 balls and could manage only 53 runs after Rohit got out.