World Cup 2023: 'Very clinical from game one till today,' says Rohit Sharma after India's 160-run win over Netherlands

India skipper Rohit Sharma said that he was pleased with how his team has turned up across the nine round-robin games of the 2023 Cricket World Cup, terming it as a “clinical” effort. World Cup 2023: News | Schedule | Results | Points table The Men in Blue rounded off the round-robin stage of the World Cup with a 160-run win over Netherlands on Sunday, and this win would come as boost for the side ahead of their semi-final clash against New Zealand on Wednesday.

Rohit reiterated the fact that it was all about thinking of one game at a time since the start of the World Cup. “Since we started the tournament, for us, it was all about thinking about one game at a time. We never wanted to look too far ahead because it’s a long tournament. It was important to focus on one game. Different venues and we had to adapt, that’s exactly what we did,” Rohit said after the match against the Dutch. “Very pleased with how we have played in these nine games. Very clinical from game one till today. That’s because different individuals have stepped up at different times. That’s a good sign for the team,” he added. Rohit said that while there are a ton of expectations given India were playing at home, it was paramount for the team to focus on the job at hand. “There’s going to be a lot of expectations, we wanted to keep everything aside and focus on the job at hand. We wanted to play the game on the field with a lot of fun and that reflected on our performances,” added the skipper. India played with nine bowlers against Netherlands, including Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma himself, both of whom took a wicket each. Rohit said that his team was trying to do something different. “Today we had nine (bowling) options, it’s important, this is the game where we could have tried. Seamers bowling those wide yorkers when not needed, but we wanted to do something different,”  added the 36-year-old. Scott Edwards, the Netherlands captain, said that his team was in a “tricky” position than compared to where they wanted to be. Netherlands finished at the rock-bottom of the 10-team points table with four points (Wins against South Africa and Bangladesh). “We played two good games of cricket, gave ourselves opportunities in other games which we’d have liked to win. Little bit of a tricky one to say where we were compared to where we wanted to be. We were pretty confident with the style we play. Coming into the tournament, we knew it’s going to be a tough tournament,” Edwards said. India’s top five batters all scored fifties before Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul converted theirs to respective centuries. Edwards was all praise for India’s batters, saying that they showed “class” in them. “They (India) showed pure class with the bat, there’s plenty to learn off that. There were periods where we bowled well, they just soaked up the pressure. If you’re three down with 10 overs to go, you’re gonna make some runs. They are going to be an extremely hard side to beat in this tournament,” added the 27-year-old.