ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 final – Rohit Sharma – ‘We tried everything we could’

“Honestly, the result hasn’t gone our way,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation, “And we know that we were not good enough today. But I’m really proud of the team, how we played from game one. It wasn’t our day, we tried everything we could from our side but it wasn’t supposed to be.

“Honestly, 20-30 [runs] more would’ve been good. We spoke around 25-30 overs when KL and Virat were batting. I thought when they were batting they were stitching a good partnership there and then we just needed to bat as long as possible. We were looking at 270-280 at that point, but then we kept losing wickets. We couldn’t stitch a big partnership there, and that’s exactly what Australia did to win the game. They stitched a big partnership after that three [early] wickets.”

Despite scoring quickly in the first powerplay, thanks largely to Rohit himself, and being 81 for 3 in the 11th over, India slowed down considerably in the middle overs, managing just two fours from overs 11 to 40 and not a single six. Rahul and Kohli were rebuilding after the early losses, putting together 67 off 108 before Pat Cummins dismissed Kohli. India would go on to lose their last five wickets for just 37 runs. The total of 240 was India’s second-lowest in this World Cup batting first, and came after they had amassed scores of 397, 410, 326 and 357 batting first in their previous four games.

Australia got off to a jittery start in swinging conditions under lights, losing David Warner, Mitchell Marsh and Steven Smith in the first seven overs to be 47 for 3. But once the balls lost some of their shine, they skidded nicely onto the bat and Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne avoided any further hiccups with a century stand dominated by Head.

Rohit said just one more quick wicket could have opened up the game.

“When you have 240 on the board, you want to take wickets as early as possible, and we did that,” he said. “But then credit to Head and Marnus, they stitched a big partnership and put us completely out of the game. But again, we tried everything we could but I thought the wicket got slightly better to bat on under the lights.

“We knew under the lights it would be slightly better. I don’t want to give that as an excuse, we didn’t bat well enough to put enough runs on the board. And then up-front we got those three wickets and we thought another wicket there we can open up the game but again credit to those two guys in the middle for stitching that big partnership.”