Indian captain KL Rahul on Sunday said that he had full faith in his batsmen despite losing seven wickets in the chase of 145 on the fourth day of the second Test cricket match against Bangladesh. India started the morning at 45 for four but lost three quick wickets to be reduced to 74 for seven. Shreyas Iyer (29 not out off 46 balls) and Ravichandran Ashwin (42 not out off 66 balls) shared a 71-run partnership from here to take India to the target before lunch on the fourth day.
Rahul said after the match, “You have to show faith in your batsmen at the crease. We had faith in him but were also nervous. After all we are humans too. But we had full faith in our batsmen. “He said,” Ashwin and Shreyas played their roles well today. He gave victory to India by performing brilliantly. At no point were we going to assume that victory would be easy. We knew we would have to work hard to score runs.
Rahul said, “It would have been more difficult to score runs with the new ball. We lost more wickets than expected. We made mistakes but we will learn from it and hopefully in future we will do better in such situations. Rahul, who is leading the team in place of Rohit Sharma, also praised his bowlers. He said, “Winning the series shows how we have prepared our fast bowlers. Ashwin and Akshar Patel also did well. Umesh (Yadav) did his job well.Jaydev Unadkat came back after a long time but he bowled brilliantly and he deserves more wickets. But Ashwin and Akshar took advantage of the pressure they created.
Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan believes the result would have been different if his team had picked up one more wicket. However, he gave full credit to Ashwin who played a brilliant knock. Everyone contributed, he said. We did well on this ground. Shreyas and Ashwin batted well under pressure. We needed one more wicket. We can consider many types of Agar Magar but I am glad that we gave them a tough challenge.
Shakib said, “Unfortunately I did not do well in the first Test but here I bowled well. I am happy with the mindset the team played with. Hopefully next year we will get better results. Ashwin was adjudged man of the match. He said that he had full faith in his defensive batting. Ashwin said, “Bangladesh performed really well. We had to work hard to win. They bowled very well but we needed to trust our defensive skills. I wanted to help Shreyas. The pitch was good but a bit slow.
Cheteshwar Pujara was adjudged Man of the Series for scoring 222 runs in two matches. Pujara said, “It was a difficult series. It was a very competitive series. I think I have found my rhythm. I played a lot of first-class matches and worked on my game. If you look at the difference between two Test series, then first-class matches help you to keep your rhythm. Every match of the World Test Championship is important and you need to be at your best.
