Indian captain Rohit Sharma admonished young pacer Harshit Rana after an incident during the ongoing second ODI against England in Cuttack that he has termed detrimental. The incident occurred on the penultimate delivery of the 32 over when Harshit’s wild throw allowed four runs to cross. In Harshit’s defense, the player had thrown an extremely wild throw while Jos Buttler, the England captain, was comfortably in his crease. As it turned out, Harshit’s throw not only missed the stumps and missed the wicketkeeper KL Rahul, but it also ended up hitting the boundary rope.
Rohit, therefore, was very angry with the young bowler and was gesturing wildly. “Dimaag kidhar hai tera? (Where’s your brain?)” he shouted on the top of his voice against Harshit. A video of the incident has gone viral on social media.
Graeme Swann, the ex-England spinner, who was commentating on-air, shared his thoughts about the incident, stating that Rana allowed his aggression to get the better of him.
“If there’s one way to upset your captain? This is it. Calm down! I told you about the bit of aggression about him earlier. He is a good old-fashioned fast bowler. Unfortunately, the aggression got the better of him with four overthrows from his own bowling,” Swann was heard saying on-air.
Meanwhile, former India head coach Ravi Shastri offered: “I could see the captain livid. It’s these little things that add pressure.”
England scored 304 in the Cuttack ODI after electing to bat first . Half-centuries by Ben Duckett and Joe Root, and a late push from Liam Livingstone saw England cross the 300-mark.
Root scored a strong 69 for the visitors after being well supported by Duckett with 65 in 56 balls-aided by 10 boundaries-and the captain, Jos Buttler, who scored 34 in 35 balls with two boundaries from a 51-run partnership for the fourth wicket. Livingstone gave England the impetus at the end with his late innings 41 off 32 balls.
Of the Indian bowlers, it was Ravindra Jadeja again who took the highest number of wickets-3 for 35 runs. Mohammed Shami, Harshit Rana, Hardik Pandya, and Varun Chakravarthy, an international debutant, took one wicket each.
In having made a couple of changes to the playing XI, India lead 1-0 in this series after having won by 4 wickets at Nagpur.
