Rohit Sharma Reveals Why India Used Record-equalling 9 Bowlers Against Netherlands

If the sight of Virat Kohli rolling his arm over during India’s final league match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 wasn’t amusing enough, captain Rohit Sharma ensured those who witnessed their ninth ODI win on the trot on Sunday night would leave with memories they likely won’t forget for some time to come.

In a record-equalling feat in ODIs, Rohit used as many as nine different bowlers against the Netherlands as they completed a comprehensive 160-run win to finish top of the points table ahead of the semi-finals.

After Kohli delighted the crowd at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru with his first ODI wicket in nine years, it was the turn of another specialist batter in Shubman Gill to roll his arm over.

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And then Suryakumar Yadav made his ODI bowling debut and the icing on the cake was when Rohit himself took over the duties late into the Netherlands innings and took a wicket with his fifth delivery to conclude the contest.

It wasn’t that India players were taking the contest lightly considering the result was just for academic purpose since they were already into the semis.

With nothing riding on the contest, it gave Rohit a chance to test out his bowling options in case he has to look beyond his first-choice bowlers.

“When you have five bowlers, you want to create those options within the team,” Rohit explained the decision to use part-timers.

“Today we had nine (bowling) options, it’s important, this was the game where we could have tried certain things,” he added.

The pace trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj has been in excellent form throughout the tourney as has been the spin duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja.

“The seamers bowling those wide yorkers when it was not needed, but we wanted to do that. As a bowling unit, we wanted to try doing something different and see what we can achieve,” Rohit said.

India will be back in action on Wednesday when they take on New Zealand in the first semifinal scheduled to be held at the Wankhede Stadium.