India’s final league match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 was a one-sided contest with the hosts thrashing the Netherlands by 160 runs to finish the stage unbeaten.
The contest though turned out to be a memorable affair with a plethora of records being set and broken. The likes of Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul belted blazing centuries before the bowlers took over to finish the job.
With India in a dominant position after setting a daunting 411-run target for the Dutch, captain Rohit Sharma gave his part-timers a go at the batters and wasn’t disappointed even though they conceded few boundaries in the process.
Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill, Suryakumar Yadav and Rohit himself bowled a few overs between them. Both Kohli and Rohit took a wicket each, sending the capacity crowd at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium into a frenzy.
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While Kohli took his first ODI wicket after a gap of nine years, Rohit ended an 11-year wait of his own when he removed half-centurion Teja Nidamanuru on 54 to bring an end to the Netherlands chase on 250 in 47.5 overs.
Kohli bowled three overs while Gill and Suryakumar two each.
Follow all the action from the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 including the World Cup schedule, World Cup 2023 results, and ICC Cricket World Cup points table. Players are vying to top the World Cup 2023 Most Runs and World Cup 2023 Most Wickets charts.
Rohit, an offspinner, brought himself into the attack late into the Netherlands innings and was smoked for a six by Nidamanuru before exacting revenge on the next delivery as Mohammed Shami took a comfortable catch in the deep.
Rohit’s wife Ritika who also attended the contest seemed quite happy with Rohit extending his ODI wickets tally to nine.
India have finished the league stage top of the points table and the only team to haven’t lost a match in the competition.
Explaining the bowling experiments, Rohit said the team wanted to check out their options and Sunday’s fixture against the Netherlands provided them the chance to do so.
“It is something always in our mind when you have five bowlers” Rohit said. “You want to create (those) options within the team and I think we have that option now. Today, we had nine options. It’s important. This was the game where we could have tried certain things.”
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