The BCCI on Wednesday named Rohit Sharma as India's full-time captain for ODIs and T20Is, with the cricketer replacing Virat Kohli as ODI captain from the tour of South Africa.
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Rohit Sharma was recently appointed as the captain of the Indian ODI and T20I setup, replacing Virat Kohli at the helm. The decision has been a controversial one, considering the lack of clarity over Kohli’s desire to step down from his role as the skipper of the national team for the 50-over format. However, Rohit stated that the legendary Indian cricketer continued to be a “leader” of the team, hailing his ability to deliver the goods with the bat.
“A batter of his quality is always needed in the squad. To have an average of 50-plus in the T20 format, it’s crazy, it’s unreal. Obviously, with the experience he has, he has bailed India out so many times from difficult situations. So that quality and his kind of batsmanship is obviously required, and he is still a leader of the team. All those things put together, you don’t want to miss out, you don’t want to ignore that kind of stuff. His presence in the squad is very, very important moving forward and it can only strengthen our team,” said Rohit during an interaction on Youtube show Backstage with Boria as quoted by Cricinfo.
Team India have struggled to emerge victorious in the key moments, over the last four years. This reflected in their defeat in the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy, the semi-final of the 2019 ODI World Cup and crashing out in the group stage of the 2021 T20 World Cup.
“To be honest, not really. I would say it was that initial phase of the game where we lost the game. So that’s something I’ll keep in mind and see that we prepare for the worst. We have to prepare when the team is 10 for 3. That’s how I want to move forward and get the message across to the boys that guys who are batting at No. 3, 4, 5, 6, there’s nowhere written that if you are 10 for 2 or 3 [in a T20I], you can’t get 180 or you can’t get 190, or maybe more. I want the guys to prepare in that fashion. Let’s say we are playing the semi-final and we are 10 for 2 in the first two overs, what do we do? What is the plan? I want to put ourselves in that situation again and see if we can respond to that. We have got some games before the World Cup to try and test that out. Because if you look there is a similarity between all three games that we lost – two Pakistan games and one New Zealand game in three ICC tournaments,” said Rohit.
“I do understand that the quality of the bowling was exceptional at that point, but it has happened three times. I hope that it doesn’t happen for the fourth time. So hopefully we will prepare for that, keeping that situation in mind and move forward and see how we can plan – whether we can just counterattack straight from ball one, whoever batter goes in. And then I don’t want people to think that, ‘Oh, they are 10 for 2, what shot is he playing?’ The commentators, the people of India or anywhere else, they need to understand that this is a plan of the team,” he added.
