Jasprit Bumrah defended his under-fire colleague Umesh Yadav for not being able to defend 14 runs in the final over of the T20 against Australia, calling it a one-off day when his execution at the death went haywire.
Bumrah got India back into the match with a superb 19th over where he gave away only two runs and Yadav had defend 14 in order to stop Australia from reaching a modest target of 127.
Asked about Yadav's last over, Bumrah came in defence of his senior colleague.
"This happens, death bowling is always difficult in any situation. It always goes both ways and it's sometimes 50-50," Bumrah said at the post-match news conference.
"You try your best, and you're clear in your execution. Some days it works, some days it doesn't. Nothing to be worried. We wanted to close the game in our favour but it's okay," Bumrah, who took 3 for 16 in four overs with 18 dot balls, said.
Bumrah pointed out that Australia, having won the toss, had the advantage of knowing what exactly they needed to do on a sluggish surface, while India spent their innings figuring out what a competitive total would be.
"It's a little different once you know your target. It was a small target, so once you hit one boundary then you don't need to take a lot of risks. At first, we are still figuring out what is the safe total so I think that was a difference maybe. They were were rotating the strikes after hitting a boundary."
"We were short by 15-20 runs, but we had a fighting total. Everybody could have taken a little more responsibility but this happens in the game of cricket. We lost two-three wickets more than we wanted to, but we backed our team and wanted to execute whatever we had."
"We were just trying our best. He was just trying to take the game deep and trying to get us to a safe total which he tried. I think he gave us a total something we could fight for."
"It's always good when you got competition in the team. He (Rahul) looked the best batsman. He was playing with a lot of composure. He started off playing good shots and he was paying conventional shots. So it's very good when a player like him is back in form."