The captain Rohit Sharma has praised the team for a comfortable win in the first ODI match of the England’s tour of India 2025. Notably, he praised Shubman Gill and Axar Patel for their batting prowess during the match.
India secured a 1-0 lead in the three-match ODI series despite the absence of the star batter Virat Kohli. Jadeja and Rana shined in the bowling department while Shubman Gill, Axar Patel and Shreyas Iyer lent a hand in the batting lineup.
Speaking in the Post match conference, Rohit Sharma said, “Pretty happy. We all knew we are playing this format after a long time. I thought right from the beginning we played as per expectation.”
“They did start well but the way we came back was superb. We wanted a leftie in the middle. It is as simple as that. We know they will spin it back into the left-handers so we wanted a leftie.”
A solid win in the bag for #TeamIndia! 💪 💪
They beat England by 4⃣ wickets in Nagpur & take 1-0 lead in the ODI series! 👏 👏
Scorecard ▶️ https://t.co/lWBc7oPRcd#INDvENG | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/lJkHoih56n
— BCCI (@BCCI) February 6, 2025
“Gill and Axar batted brilliantly out in the middle. Nothing specific. Overall as a team I just want us as a team to keep doing the right things as much as possible,” concluded Rohit Sharma.
Batting First England started well with Phil Salt and Ben Duckett putting a 75-run stand. But after the dismissal of the top order Jos Buttler came to the rescue smashing a fifty in the middle order before being dismissed by Axar Patel.
Jacob Bethell also put up a half-century helping the side to cross 200+ runs. But with the dismissal of these batters, England Eventually crumbled to lose all wickets for scoring 248 runs.
Harshit Rana and Jadeja picked three wickets each while Shami, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav picked one wickets each.
With the target of 249, Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma opened the innings where they failed to give a jump start. However, Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer joined hand to forge 94 runs partnership for the third wicket. Iyer smashed 59 runs before being dismissed on lbw by Jacob Bethell.
Axar Patel who came to bat after Iyer, smashed a fifty and contributed the side to cross 200+ runs.
Shubmn Gill smashed 87 and missed his century as he was dismissed by Saqib Mahmood. With Jadeja and Pandya contributing remaining runs India secured a four wicket win with 74 balls to spare.
