India vs. Bangladesh: Rohit Sharma Praises Clinical, All-Round Performance

India put in an all-round performance with bat and ball to beat Bangladesh by six wickets in their second match of the ongoing Nidahas Twenty20 Tri-Series in Sri Lanka.

The Men in Blue had lost their opening match against the hosts after the bowlers failed to defend their total of 175, and stand-in captain Rohit Sharma was hoping the team would learn from their mistakes ahead of the second game.

Learn, they did, but they were also helped by a poor batting performance from Bangladesh. The latter managed to put up just 139 on the board in 20 overs with Liton Das as their top scorer with 34. Sabbir Rahman was the only other batsman to score 30, while all the other batsmen failed to cross the 20-run barrier.

Jaidev Unadkat picked up three wickets, while spin duo Washington Sundar and Yuzvendra Chahal put pressure by starving the batsmen of runs — they just gave a combined 42 runs in their eight overs. It was a straight forward chase for the Indian batsmen and they were led again by Shikhar Dhawan, who scored his second-half century of the tournament.

The Sunrisers Hyderabad batsman is leading India’s batting in the tournament after backing up his 90 in the first match with a knock of 55 in the second match. Manish Pandey again made a valuable contribution lower down the order to ensure India completed the chase without any jitters with eight balls to spare.

"I think it was a great performance, something that was expected from us. Right from the start to the end, it was clinical and a complete team effort,” stand-in captain Sharma said after the win, as quoted on NDTV Sports.

"We looked into what went wrong in the game against Sri Lanka and we thought hitting the length was the option for us. We wanted their batsmen to take on the longer boundaries. Bowlers executed plans very well. We kept it simple and got the basics right, which was missing in the first game," the Mumbai Indians skipper added.

However, Sharma did point to the fielding as one area the team needs to improve going into the latter stages of the tournament. Despite the convincing win, India dropped a few easy catches while on the field and the skipper believes there is room for improvement.

India has come leaps and bounds in the fielding department in recent years and a few players in the team are among the best fielders in world cricket. Ravindra Jadeja was rated as one of the best in the backward point position, while Virat Kohli, Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane and Suresh Raina were also rated highly.

"Catching is something where there's always room for improvement. We want to get better as a fielding side. We are much better than that," Sharma added talking about the standard of India’s fielding.