Rohit: ‘We were calm even though we were a bit sloppy on the field’

“The way our bowlers came and bowled up front with the new ball, getting those wickets… when you have a target [India scored 397] like that, you’ve got to take wickets upfront. And we did that exactly,” Rohit said on Star Sports after the game. “Today being the semi-finals, I wouldn’t say that there was no pressure. Whenever you play the game, there is always pressure, and obviously semi-final adds a bit of extra there. But I think the guys were doing the job.

“To be honest, we wanted to take that semi-final out of the equation, not to think too much about it. We just wanted to keep doing what we’ve been doing in the first nine games that we played, and things came off for us really nicely in the second half as well.”

“I’ve played a lot of cricket here [at the Wankhede]. So I know any score on this ground… you cannot relax, you got to get the job done as quickly as possible and stay at it. We knew there will be pressure on us at some stage there will be partnership. We just got to stay collected and I think that’s what we did”

Rohit Sharma

“When the scoring rate is above nine all the time, you got to keep taking your chances,” Rohit said. “Sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t. They gave us chances, we didn’t take them. But credit to them as well in the middle, Mitchell and Williamson batted brilliantly.

“Again, for us, it was important to stay calm. At one point, the crowd went absolutely silent, that’s the nature of the game. But we knew that we had to pull something up from our sleeves and need a magic, either a good catch or a run out or maybe a magic delivery. But we tried everything we couldn’t [break through], but again, Shami was brilliant.

“I’ve played a lot of cricket here [at the Wankhede]. So I know any score on this ground… you cannot relax, you got to get the job done as quickly as possible and stay at it. We knew there will be pressure on us at some stage there will be partnership. We just got to stay collected and I think that’s what we did. We were calm even though we were a bit sloppy on the field. But that can happen. We’ve got nine perfect games on the field. So, these things are bound to happen. But I’m glad that we could get the job done in the end.”

The Wankhede is known for being batting-friendly, and it didn’t play any differently on the day.

“The top-five-six batters, whenever they’ve gotten an opportunity, they’ve made it really count,” Rohit said. “Very, very pleased to see what Iyer has done for us in this tournament. Gill, the way he batted up front was brilliant. Unfortunately, he started getting cramps so we had to bring him back.

“Kohli was brilliant as usual, played his trademark innings and got to that landmark milestone as well. All in all, the batting was superb, and that is the kind of template we want to bat with and move forward with.”