More than a couple of months after India's ICC ODI World Cup 2023 exit, skipper Rohit Sharma is determined to win an ICC trophy which has continued to elude him. In the World Cup, Rohit scored a solitary century compared to five in the 2019 edition. His attacking brand of cricket was applauded by many former and current cricketers. As India face the England challenge, Rohit gave an insight into his captaincy style saying that ‘hundreds don’t matter’ to him, trophies do.
"I wanted to bring about certain change, players going out there and playing with a lot of freedom. I wanted to take the statistical side of cricket out of this team,” Rohit told JioCinema on the sidelines of the Hyderabad Test against Ben Stokes-led side.
"Numbers are overrated. In India, we do talk a lot about numbers and all of that. I got five hundreds in the 2019 World Cup, but we still lost. The hundreds don’t matter.
"I may think about them may be 20 years later after I retire, but what did we get? I wanted the trophy.
"If you don’t win trophies, I don’t think those 5-6 hundreds make too much sense. Team sport is all about winning trophies, not about individual accomplishments.”
In the last 10 years, India reached the final of T20 World Cup 2014, Champions Trophy 2017, two editions of World Test Championships since the inaugural season, and ODI World Cup 2023. Rohit focused the need to be optimistic.
"The last three years have been great. Except winning the finals of ICC trophies, we have won everything," the 36-year-old said.
"That’s one thing we’ve not been able to accomplish, but I think time will come. All we need to do is stay in a good mindset, not worry too much about the past, because you can’t change the past.
"What you can change is what is going to come next, so all of us are quite focused on that. We are playing our hearts out."
Rohit had a similar approach on Day 1 of the opening Test of the series. He Yashasvi Jaiswal, he tried to dominate English bowlers. He hit three fours in his 24-run knock before getting dismissed by Jack Leach.
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