Indore
\nIndian captain Virat Kohli on Sunday said head coach Ravi Shastri was the brain behind promoting all-rounder Hardik Pandya up the order, which eventually paid rich dividends for the home side in the series-clinching five-wicket win over Australia in the third ODI here.<\/p>\n
Coming to bat at the no. 4 position, Pandya played a delightful 78-run knock off 72 balls to steer India home while chasing a competitive 294 for a win.<\/p>\n
Kohli also heaped special praise on Pandya and termed the “explosive” all-rounder as a “great asset” for the team.<\/p>\n
“I’m really, really satisfied with the win. He (Pandya) is a star, has the ability with the ball, bat and the field.<\/p>\n
We need a guy like that, we’ve been missing an explosive all- rounder. He is a great asset for Indian cricket,” Kohli said after the match.<\/p>\n
“The idea behind his promotion was Ravi (Shastri) bhai, to attack the spinner,” he added.<\/p>\n
Pandya rose to the occasion yet again with a fluent knock as India registered a comfortable five-wicket win over Australia in the third ODI to grab the number one ranking.<\/p>\n
Chasing 294 for a win, India overhauled the target with 13 balls to spare in front of a packed Holkar stadium to take a series-clinching 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Openers Rohit Sharma (71) and Ajikya Rahane (70) set the platform for the win with their 131-run partnership while Pandya steered the side to victory with his crucial knock, which came off 72 balls.<\/p>\n
Kohli also backed his new-found two wrist spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal.<\/p>\n
“Wrist spinners need to be backed, they won’t always get grip from the wicket, but they possess the ability to get wickets,” he said.<\/p>\n
The India skipper said he backed his bowling unit to make a strong comeback, especially after Australia were off to a flying start.<\/p>\n
“Steve (Smith) mentioned the first 35 overs was good from their end, we knew when we get 2-3 wickets with their lower middle order, we could pull things back. It was a 330-340 wicket,” Kohli said.<\/p>\n
“Coming back from difficult situations has been a feature of this team. They were 35-40 runs short.”<\/p>\n
Kohli also hinted that with the series in their pocket, India might try out a few reserve players in the remaining two games of the five-match series.<\/p>\n
“We might try few players now, but mindset remains the same. Journey stops only after the fifth game,” he said.<\/p>\n
Losing skipper Steve Smith said the visitors were themselves to blame for losing the tempo after putting themselves in a strong position.<\/p>\n
“We set it up beautifully in the first 37-38 overs. We put ourselves in a good position. (But0 Indian bowlers executed well, we executed poorly,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We needed 330 plus. Hardik (Pandya) was magnificent in end there. Finchy played magnificently, the wicket slowed up a little bit for both teams. The ball came on for the first 35 overs in both innings.”<\/p>\n
Man-of-the-match Pandya said he saw the promotion as a good opportunity to unleash his potential.<\/p>\n
“It feels pretty good but I would like to finish the game next time. I don’t need to be surprised. It is important to back myself and saw it as an opportunity,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indore Indian captain Virat Kohli on Sunday said head coach Ravi Shastri was the brain behind promoting all-rounder Hardik Pandya up the order, which eventually paid rich dividends for the home side in the series-clinching five-wicket win over Australia in the third ODI here. Coming to bat at the no. 4 position, Pandya played a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5953,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5951\/revisions\/5953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}