After brilliant bowling from Ravindra Jadeja and debutant Harshit Rana, Shubman Gill's patient half-century helped India beat England by four wickets in the first ODI played at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur on Thursday. While chasing the target in this match, the Indian team promoted all-rounder Axar Patel in batting.

Axar was sent above KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya and after the match captain Rohit Sharma also responded to this. Rohit said that he wanted to use a left-hander in the batting order, that's why he promoted Axar. Rohit told the broadcaster after the match, "Nothing special. Overall as a team, I just want us to keep making sure that we keep doing the right things as much as possible. There is nothing special that we want to achieve." Speaking further, Rohit said, "We want to try everything possible in terms of bowling, batting and things like that. So (we) were pretty successful in doing that today, although I felt we shouldn't have lost those wickets at the end. It would have been nice, but again, players are trying to put pressure on the bowlers and while doing that, these kinds of things can happen. I am very happy because we all knew that we have been playing this format for a long time, so it was important for us to regroup as soon as possible and understand what to do. It is a slightly longer format, where you have time to get back into the game. When things start going away from you a bit, it doesn't mean it will keep going away. You have to try to bring things back and that's exactly what we did." 

Talking about Axar, he said, "We needed a left-handed player in the middle order. We know that (England) have some spinners who will bowl to left-handed batsmen and we wanted a left-handed batsman in the field. Axar, in the last few years we have seen how much he has improved as a cricketer, especially with his bat and today we got to see it again. We were under a bit of pressure at that time, we needed a partnership and Gill and Axar batted really well."