Bengaluru: India's former batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar was impressed with the batting display by Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul against Afghanistan in the Super 12 group-stage match of the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup in UAE.
"The way Rohit and Rahul batted was brilliant. The best thing I found about Rohit today is the way he played the inside out to off-spinner (Mahammad) Nabi. Rohit's experience helped him in this situation and he played some good shots, so as with KL Rahul, very calm and composed and even played some exquisite shots," he said in a video posted on his Facebook handle.
India batters, yesterday, had lit the Abu Dhabi stadium on fire by their swashbuckling batting, which helped India post a mammoth 210 for 2 as Rohit and Rahul scored 74 and 69, respectively.
Tendulkar also praised Rohit and Rahul for their running between the wickets against Afghanistan. "The running between the wickets of the opening pair was really impressive. Usually while scoring boundaries during the powerplay, the batters miss singles and doubles. But that was not the case today and the running was also equally aggressive," he said.
He also lauded spinner Ravichandran Ashwin for lovely execution after coming back into the side after a long hiatus.
The Afghan batters could not read Ashwin's 'back-flip ball' and it was one of the reasons that they could not score a single boundary off him.
Tendulkar also appreciated the 63-run partnership between Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant, by saying that it was a game changer, which helped the team achieve victory by a big margin which was more critical for India.
He said the 211-run target looked impossible for Afghanistan to chase down and finished on 144 for 7, which was 66 runs off target.
Tendulkar said Afghanistan got it wrong by introducing spinners early on, on a pitch which had grass, which would have helped the seamers better. (UNI)
