The quick bowler, Harshal Patel who came to the India side based on his death overs expertise, has been treated with complete hatred by Australia’s players in the just-concluded T20I series.
With figures of 0 for 49 (in 4 overs), 0 for 32, and 1 for 18 (in 2 overs), Harshal Patel’s comeback to the T20I side has been not exactly alluring.
The quick bowler, who came to the India side based on his death overs expertise, has been treated with complete hatred by Australia’s players in the just-concluded T20I series.
His skipper Rohit Sharma however, isn’t excessively stressed and anticipates that the pacer should ‘rectify mistakes’, and emphasized that the team management upheld him to come great in the matches ahead.
“Coming back from an injury is never easy,”
Rohit said.
“He missed cricket for close to two months. Whenever bowlers go through an injury phase and come back, it’s never easy, so we’ve not judged him on how he has performed in these three games because we know his quality.
“He has bowled some tough overs for us in the past, and also for his franchise. We believe in his quality, whatever he has as a bowler. It’s important to keep showing that faith and I’m pretty sure he’s also trying to rectify those mistakes. He’s working hard on his bowling,”
Rohit added, opining that the RCB quick wasn’t far from his best.
“As I see, in the nets, whenever we do have our training sessions, he’s always working on his skills which are what you want. You want players to go out and keep improving. We talk about it all the time; we can see that happening. So, I’m pretty sure he’s not far from his best.”
India was facing difficulties in the death overs in the recent Asia Cup as India’s main bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar shows poor performance in the death overs.
“It’s important we give him that space,”
Rohit said.
“Because when you have a guy like him in the team and the quality that he brings, we know that he’s had more good days than bad days honestly speaking, in the last so many years we’ve seen. Yes, of late it’s been not the kind of performance that he would want, but that can happen to any of the bowlers.
Rohit said the management was conversing with Bhuvneshwar about the hazards of being unsurprising at the death, and that he completely anticipates that the pacer should get a handle on everything and get to the next level.
As he said with Harshal, Rohit repeated that the management believed in Bhuvneshwar’s quality.
“From our side, we’re trying to work out what other things we can do. Because when you’re bowling in the death you can’t be predictable, you need to have options to bowl on both sides of the ground and sort fields accordingly. Those are the things we’re talking to him about. Someone with that experience, it’ll be easy for him to grasp all the knowledge that is out there,”
Rohit said.
“He’s done it, it’s there in his mind, it’s not that he will completely forget what he’s done as a bowler in the past, it’s just that he needs to bring that out confidently and things will happen for him. As a team, as management, we believe in his ability, we know a guy like him who more often than not has done the job for us can have a few bad games. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have quality anymore. He has it in him, just that for us it’s time for us to show faith in him and keep backing his skillset, what he wants to execute,”
Rohit added.
India has three T20Is against South Africa, beginning on Wednesday (September 28), before heading to Australia for the T20 World Cup next month.