'He's still having a sense of it': Gavaskar rates Rohit Sharma's captaincy in 1st ODI, points out area of concern

In India's historic 1000th ODI match and Rohit Sharma's first assignment as a full-time ODI skipper, the team beat West Indies by six wickets in their chase of 177 to take a 1-0 series lead.

Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar on Sunday rated the performance of India's new white-ball skipper Rohit Sharma in the leadership role. While doing so he pointed out an area of concern in his captaincy.

Sunil Gavaskar; Rohit Sharma

In India's historic 1000th ODI match and Rohit's first assignment as a full-time ODI skipper, the team beat West Indies by six wickets in their chase of 177 to take a 1-0 series lead.

Speaking to Star Sports after India's victory at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Gavaskar hailed Rohit's captaincy choices with his bowling changes and field placements but admitted that he needs to station better fielders at crucial positions.

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"I think he was very good. He made the right kind of bowling changes. Field placements were good. Maybe the one are that he should be looking at keeping the right fielder at the position. Sometimes you want to have a fielder who is very quick, who has got a good arm on the boundary and they can save the boundaries and get the ball in and make sure that the extra run is not there," he said.

He exemplified his point with Prasidh Krishna, who was asked to field near the boundary ropes, and Gavsakar feels that Rohit should have had someone like Washington Sundar in the deep, as he has good throwing capability and is a good chaser of the ball. He added that fielders like Krishna and Ishan Kishan should be fielded inside the 30-yard circle while players like Sundar should be kept in the deep.

The veteran cricketer however backed Rohit to rectify the mistake in the second match as it was his first game in charge and is still getting to know his players.

“Today he had someone like Prasidh Krishna who is a work in progress as far as fielding is concerned. So he should be somewhere inside and somebody who is quick...like Ishan Kishan, who doesn't have the greatest of throwing arms.”

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"But these are the two fielders who should be in the 30-yard circle and not in the deep where they have to do the chasing. Have guys like Washington Sundar. But again this is the first match and he is having a sense of what the fielders are like. In the next match you will see different things altogether," he said.

The legendary batter also rated Rohit's performance in a scale of 1 to 10.

"With a win like this, it is always a good start and he contributed to the win in terms of scoring with what is your specialty, that is batting. You have done that and of course been able to make the bowling changes, the field placing. You get just about everything right. So I think if you ask me on a scale of 10, I will give him 9.99," he said.

The second ODI will be played on February 9 at the same venue.