​​World Cup 2023: Rohit Sharma would have been disappointed getting out on 87, says Gautam Gambhir

Former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir feels Rohit Sharma would have been disappointed getting out on 87 against England at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium, Lucknow on Sunday.

While Rohit has been playing in an aggressive manner in the ongoing World Cup, the Indian skipper showed he also has the waiting game in his repertoire when the hosts lost three early wickets of Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer to find themselves in tatters at 40-3.

Sharma played a gutsy knock of 87 runs off 101 balls but got out while trying to take the attack against England leg-spinner Adil Rashid. In fact, Rohit himself admitted he threw his wicket away in the post-match ceremony.

Gambhir reckons it was another great opportunity for Rohit to score a century but more importantly score more runs for the team, which would have helped India post more than 250 runs on the board. In the end, India could only manage 229 runs, which proved to be more than enough as they won by 100 runs.

“It was a bad shot as well. At that time obviously, India wanted him to bat a little bit deeper. At times you live by the sword, you die by one. That is how he has been playing in this World Cup. He has been taking his chances but he batted beautifully. And I’m sure he would be disappointed as well because he could have.”

He added, “See, a hundred is not important. More important is that if he takes India 260 to 270 which would have been a very good total on this wicket and that’s the reason why I said he played a very bad shot because he was playing with Surya and they were having a very good partnership,” Gautam Gambhir said while speaking on Star Sports.

India came up with a brilliant bowling performance with Mohammed Shami returning with another impressive figures of 4-22 whereas Jasprit Bumrah had 3-32. Furthermore, Kuldeep Yadav bagged two crucial wickets of Jos Buttler and Liam Livingstone.

India will next take on Sri Lanka at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Thursday.