Team India all-rounder Axar Patel sent a cheeky message to skipper Rohit Sharma after the Men in Blue secured a commanding six-wicket victory over Bangladesh in their opening match of the Champions Trophy 2025 on Thursday. In his post on X, the left-arm spinner wrote, "Wickets in the bag, win on the board… @ImRo45 Dinner pending hai."
With Rohit dropping a simple catch at slip to deny Axar a well-deserved hat-trick in the ninth over, the 31-year-old could have become the second player in the Champions Trophy history to bag the feat. At the post-match presentation, Rohit jokingly claimed that he will take Axar to dinner to compensate for the missed the catch. Although Jaker Ali, who was dropped by the Indian captain, scored 68 to carry their side to 228. Nevertheless, the Men in Blue registered an easy six-wicket win to open their campaign.
Taking to X, Axar wrote:
"Wickets in the bag, win on the board… @ImRo45 Dinner pending hai."
"We knew it would be on the slower side" - Rohit Sharma on the pitch
At the post-match presentation, Rohit claimed that he was aware of how the conditions will be in Dubai and feels the experience in their team helped massively in adapting to it. He stated:
"Before you come and play any game, you have to be confident. In the chase, as it goes on, there are different emotions that come through. But you have to be ready. We have been in that situation before. There's a lot of experience in the dressing room to stay composed. KL and Gill at the end were very composed. One game, very hard to make anything out of the track. Not much grass on it, we knew it would be on the slower side, and that is how it played. As a team, I thought we adapted to the conditions really well, with the bowling and with the bat as well.
The Men in Blue will next face Pakistan on February 23.
