India vs Australia warm-up match: Mohammed Shami's fiery last-over (2,2,W,W,W,W) helped team India beat Australia by 6 runs in India vs Australia warm-up match on Monday at Gabba. Notably, Shami wasn't initially included in India XI for the warm-up game initially but was brought in by skipper Rohit to bowl the penultimate over. Australia needed 11 runs off the last over but Shami's bowling heroics helped India attain a remarkable 6-run win over the hosts.
Reacting to Shami's dream comeback, India skipper Rohit Sharma revealed he wanted to challenge Shami by asking him to straightaway bowl the last over as he was returning to the side after a long time.
"Mohammed Shami was brilliant. We know how lethal he can be with the ball, and we all saw what happened. He is coming back after a long time, so we wanted to give him an over. Wanted to give him a challenge and let him bowl the final over, and you saw what he did," Rohit Sharma said in the post-match presentation, ANI reported.
Talking about India's batting performance against the hosts, Rohit praised star India batter Suryakumar Yadav who played a knock of 50 runs in 33 balls.
"I thought we batted well, towards the end we could have added 10-15 runs more. We always want a set batter to stay till the end, Suryakumar Yadav did it, overall a great batting effort with a nice bounce, was a pitch where you can trust your shots. You got to be smart with batting on grounds like these. You can't forget to push the balls into the gaps, scoring 8-9 runs in an over can be quite an effective plan," the India skipper added.
Citing that the men in blue can improve, Sharma added," It was a great practice game for us. There is room for improvement, but I want more consistency from the bowlers. You need to keep things simple and hit the deck hard. Overall a good game for us, they had a decent partnership and that put us under pressure."
(With ANI Inputs)