"Sri Lanka batters were smart, we were not" Rohit Sharma's blunt assessment on India's batting failures in SL vs IND ODI series

Rohit Sharma was the leading run-scorer of the ODI series but other Indian batters were disappointing.

The Indian cricket team suffered their first bilateral ODI series loss against Sri Lanka after 27 years as they went down 2-0 in the three-match series that was played at the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.

The first game ended in a tie and the hosts won the next two matches to seal a historic series win. All three games followed the same pattern: Sri Lanka posted competitive totals while batting first; Rohit Sharma gave attacking starts to his side before the Lankan bowlers pounced on the Indian batters.

India were completely outplayed in the third ODI, which they lost by a huge margin of 110 runs.

India lost 27 wickets to spin, the most a side has lost to spinners in a three-match ODI series.

We didn’t play enough sweeps: Rohit Sharma

India captain Rohit Sharma observed that the Sri Lankan batters employed the sweep shot and its varieties in a much more effective way than the Indian batters did.

Rohit pointed out that the Sri Lankans scored heavily square of the wicket, while the Indian batters tried to use their feet to play in front. This, he feels, was the key difference in the batting of the two teams.

In the post-match press conference, Sharma said, “They were consistent with sweeps, taking their chances. There weren’t a lot of runs scored down the ground. They didn’t use the feet as much as we expected. It was about using sweeps and piercing that deep square leg and midwicket field. That is something we failed to do as a batting unit. We didn’t play enough sweeps, reverse sweeps, or paddle sweeps, and used our feet too much. That was the difference.“

He added, “If you look at Kusal Mendis and Avishka Fernando today [who put on an 82-run stand], they got a lot of runs square of the wicket. They were using the turn, and sweeping, making the fielder move left and right. They were smart with how they batted and we were not.”

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