Rohit hails India bowling unit as Pakistan suffer ‘wake-up call’

Meanwhile, India counterpart Rohit Sharma was naturally delighted with his bowling outfit, especially the early exploits from Bhuvneshwar Kumar, which Pakistan struggled to recover from.

The fast bowler’s 3/15, including two crucial blows at the top of Pakistan’s innings, earned him the Player of the Match award, as India’s attack proved too hot for Pakistan's batsmen to handle.

Rohit was thrilled with how his bowlers performed at the Dubai International Stadium, with Kedar Jadhav and Jasprit Bumrah also excelling, but the skipper acknowledged that Kumar’s early breakthroughs went a long way to deciding the outcome of the much-anticipated group clash.

“Right from the start we were quite disciplined,” said the skipper. “We wanted to learn from yesterday's mistakes. It was a great game for the bowling unit – the spinners kept it tight and got the odd breakthrough but the wickets in the first couple of overs were very important.”

“It was important to get early wickets because they've got some quality batting – we didn't want to make things easy for them. We kept things on the stumps and we spoke about not giving Pakistan room.”

When Babar [Azam] and Shoaib [Malik] were getting a partnership we discussed not to panic – and I was happy we didn't. Kedar has been working on his bowling and he takes it seriously. It augurs well for the team – his overs in middle were very crucial, especially after Hardik's injury (Pandya had to leave the field with a back complaint).

Losing captain Sarfraz Ahmed was clearly disappointed with Pakistan’s batting display and conceded that they may have underestimated the bowling prowess of Jadhav. “We didn't have a good start, losing two wickets in the first five overs," he said. "Then regular wickets meant we couldn't come back into the game. You can say we batted poorly.

“The wickets were soft dismissals, except Babar's. So we need to see how we play in the future. We did prepare for the two main spinners but got out to the third one (Jadhav). This is a good wake-up call before the super fours.”