Sydney: Manish Pandey played a scintillating innings under pressure and not only scored a century, but also lead India to a thrilling win against Australia in the fifth match of the five-match ODI series on Saturday. The youngster, playing his fourth international, said he wanted to capitalise on the chance he got because of Ajinkya Rahane’s injury and he was happy to do the same.
Pandey, who was man-of-the-match for his 104 runs off 81 balls, said “Batting No. 4 is one of the chances I got because Ajju (Ajinkya Rahane) was injured and I wanted to capitalise on it, especially on these wickets, where 300 runs were scored in every match.
Thanking the crowd for their support, he said, “Always nice to have Indian people in the stadium, it's a big boost to us."
Meanwhile, Rohit Sharma, who as man-of-the-series, said missing an individual ton hardly mattered for him as India won the match. “Getting out on99 did not matter as we won the game tonight. Young Manish Pandey did really well. He was playing his fourth one-day international and got that hundred and helped us get us off the mark.”
“Over the course of the tournament we played some really good cricket. There were moments where we couldn't capitalise on. We never thought we were 4-0 down. We wanted to come and win this game and go with a positive frame of mind into the T20 series. I've been batting really well in one-day cricket, it's important that I keep scoring runs for the team,” said Sharma.
