Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bat first on a pitch which seemed conducive for stroke play. India got off to a stellar start as Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul put together a superb century stand for the first wicket. While Rahul was not entirely fluent, Rohit Sharma was at his best and after he was put down by Tamim Iqbal on 9, he never looked back.
He galloped along to his fourth century in the World Cup and thus equalled the feat of former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara as the player to have scored four centuries in one single edition of the World Cup. Sangakkara smashed four centuries on the bounce in the last edition in 2015.
Overall, the Indian opener now has five centuries in World Cup and is now tied with former Australian captain Ricky Ponting and is one century short of Indian batting icon Sachin Tendulkar, who has 6 centuries to his name.
Rohit joined Sachin Tendulkar in an exclusive list
Also, during this innings, Rohit joined Sachin Tendulkar in an exclusive club as the Indian opener became the second Indian batsman after Sachin Tendulkar to score 500 runs in a single edition of the World Cup. The batting icon achieved this feat twice during the course of his illustrious career (673 runs in 2003 and 523 runs in 1996).
It has been a brilliant tournament for Rohit so far as he started the campaign with a brilliant unbeaten 122 against South Africa and followed it up with 57 against defending champions Australia. He then smacked a superb century against Pakistan in Manchester. After stuttering in the two matches against Afghanistan and West Indies, he hit form again in the match against England, where he scored 102.
Despite India's stellar start and a solid platform, the middle order stuttered once again and Mustafizur bagged a 5-wicket haul as Bangladesh managed to pull things back considerably as India could only manage 314.
Speaking at the end of the innings, KL Rahul said that the pitch was slow where the bowlers can restrict the scoring and apply pressure on the batsmen.
"It will come and it is due. (The surface is) Pretty similar to what we played on a couple of days ago against England. It is really slow. The bowlers have bowled here before and know what lengths to bowl, what pace to bowl and hopefully, we will come out and execute our plans," Rahul said after the Indian innings.
