Indian captain responds to Ben Duckett's comments on Bazball remark

Rohit Sharma said that he didn’t know what exactly ‘Bazball’ meant before the fifth and final Test of the World Test Championship 2023-25 series versus England in Dharamsala. 

"I honestly don't know what [Bazball] means, whether it is to go and strike, whether it is to go and defend and wait for the loose ball," Rohit stated in the pre-match press meeting.

"I have not seen any wild swinging from anyone, so I don't know exactly what this term means.

"But, yeah, clearly they have played better cricket from what they played the last time they were here. And you got to give credit to two of their batters who got big hundreds there and played well. They applied their method to get some success and they got it. But other than that I don't know what it means."

The Indian captain was amazed by Ben Duckett’s remarks which claimed that his English side should probably have the credit for the way players from the opponent side [after Jaiswal's hundred] were playing in the aggressive style of cricket. 

"There was a guy called Rishabh Pant in our team, probably Ben Duckett hasn’t seen him play,” Rohit said while laughing.

While talking of the pitch conditions at Dharamsala, the Indian skipper said, "The last time we played a Test match here was in 2017 against Australia and both seamers and spinners were in play, but I'm not too sure [about this Test]. It's different weather here, I don't know too much about it.

"But looking at the pitch right now, it looks like a good pitch. Obviously, you have to expect, when there's weather like that, that there will be some movement, and maybe later on as the game goes on there will be some turn or something like that."

The third Test match started on Thursday, 7 March in Dharamsala where England batted first and scored 218 runs in the first innings. The Indian spin duo of Kuldeep Yadav (5W), and Ravichandran Ashwin (4W), who is also playing his 100th Test match, took nine wickets collectively to run over the English batting order. In retaliation, the Indian opening duo of skipper Rohit Sharma and dynamic youngster Yashasvi Jaiswal scored half-centuries each anchor India to a commendable score of 135 runs on the first day. The ‘Men in Blue’ trails behind 83 runs when they start their Day 2 with batters Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill taking on the field.