Indian captain Rohit Sharma did not take kindly to a post-match presentation question about his side.

Following India's ODI series defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka, Rohit Sharma scoffed at claims that his side had been complacent during the course of the tour.

India had come into the series as heavy favourites to win, even if they were playing away from home and were not quite a full-strength outfit. They ended up tying the first match, before slipping to defeat in the second and being comprehensively outplayed in the final fixture on Wednesday (August 7).

It was the first time in 27 years that an Indian men's team had lost a bilateral ODI series to Sri Lanka, and proved to be an inauspicious start to Gautam Gambhir's tenure as the team's head coach.

 

 

Rohit: No complacency when you're playing for India

After the conclusion of the final game, Rohit Sharma was asked during the presentation ceremony whether India had been a tad complacent in their approach. They had, after all, won the T20 World Cup just over a month ago, and had come up against a brittle Sri Lankan outfit in the T20I series.

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Rohit did not seem to take the question kindly, and sought to dismiss such thoughts instantly. "No, it's a joke. When you're playing for India, there's no complacency. We have to give credit where credit is due, Sri Lanka played better than us," he said. "We looked at the conditions, wanted to take pace off the ball, and that's why we went with our combination.

"All in all we didn't play good cricket through the series, and that is why we stand here. Throughout there were a few positives too. How the spinners bowled, some of the batters in the middle as well. We lost the series, and I feel there are a lot of areas we need to look at rather than the positives."

 

 

India did experiment heavily with their batting order throughout the series, and attempted to hand different roles to different players, perhaps in an attempt to make each of them more well-rounded. These did not, however, bring the desired outcome in terms of results from this particualr series.

The Men in Blue will be in action in Test cricket next, when they take on Bangladesh in a 2-match home series in Chennai and Kanpur.  

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