Playing two finals is honestly a good achievement for us: Rohit Sharma

After suffering a 209-run defeat at the hands of Australia in the World Test Championship Final at The Oval in London, team India skipper Rohit Sharma stated that they started out well but the Australians “took them off guard.”
“It was a tough one. I thought we started well, winning the toss and putting them into bat. We bowled well in the first session but let ourselves down. But you’ve got to give credit to the Australian batters. That just took us off guard. We knew it was hard to come back. We fought till the end but congratulations to Australia,” the captain said at the post-match presentation.
The 36-year-old said that making two consecutive finals is a feat itself and that the effort the team put in over the past two years cannot be discounted.
“We worked really hard for four years, playing two finals is a good achievement for us. But the Test Championship final comes over two years so you can’t take away what we achieved in those two years. Its unfortunate we couldn’t go on and win the finals but we’ll keep our heads and go on to fight for the next one,” he said.
The captain believes that Ajinkya Rahane and Shardul Thakur battled valiantly in the first innings to keep India in the game, but the batters struggled in the second innings of the final.
“We spoke of a lot of things [on how to better bowl to Head and Smith]. We spoke about bowling tighter lines, some different stuff. But it didn’t work out. You’ve got to stay in the game. Sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“I thought it was a great fight back from Rahane and Shardul. We needed somebody to stand up and they kept us in the game. We bowled well in the second innings. But we again failed with the bat. It was a good pitch to bat on. We didn’t capitalise,” Rohit said.