Former Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh has mocked Rohit Sharma for bringing Varun Chakravarthy into the attack very late when he had already allowed Travis Head to hit Mohammed Shami and Hardik Pandya for runs.
Chakravarthy was included in the playing XI against Australia after his earlier successes in the group-stage game against New Zealand, and he was an important match-up against Head.
Harbhajan was not happy with Rohit’s tactics and demanded that Chakravarthy should have been sent with the new ball to counterhead.
“When you have Varun Chakarvarthy, why would you wait nine overs to introduce him against Travis Head? What would be the point of having him, then? The Indian team should have started with him at one end, with Shami at the other,” Harbhajan said while discussing on Star Sports.
“He (Head) got set and then Varun was brought on- difference is 49 runs,” added Harbhajan in the mid-innings show.
Boys from India have secured a place in the final of the Champions Trophy, which is going to be held in Dubai instead of Lahore, being the originally intended host due to travel restrictions for Rohit&men for security reasons.
Star batter Virat Kohli was well supported by Shreyas Iyer, with whom he notched up a cakewalk 91-run partnership for the 3rd wicket and brought stability to the ship after the early dismissal of Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill.
Throughout his stay at the wicket, Australian captain Steve Smith was the backbone of the Australian innings, involving himself in three partnerships yielding in excess of 50 runs, scoring 50 with Head for the second wicket, 56 for the third wicket with Marnus Labuschagne, and 54 for the fifth wicket with Alex Carey.
There are few other batsmen with an overall fortune quotient higher than that of Head, a cameo innings of 39 marked with various strokes of luck: Shami dropped a catch off his bowling off the very first legal ball of the match; he was nearly run out and twice narrowly avoided losing his stumps to inside edges.
But Head’s threat was mitigated by Chakravarthy as he hit a high ball, and Gill, running in from the deep, took the catch.
Head has been a feared proposition for India, with match-winning hundreds in the 2023 ODI World Cup final and World Test Championship final, as well as sizeable knocks in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
