Rohit Sharma Makes A Big Statement: After white-washing the West Indies cricket team in 3-match ODI series by 3-0, the Indian cricket team would be high on confidence. The focus has now shifted to the 5-match T20I series, where Rohit Sharma will be leading the Indian cricket team.
Yes, Rohit Sharma is back, after having rested for the ODI series against West Indies. In absence of Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan had led the Men in Blue in the just-concluded ODI series.
Rohit Sharma On Team India Locking Horns With West Indies
Ahead of the much-awaited T20I series, Rohit Sharma addressed a press conference on Thursday, where he expressed that he was excited for the T20I series as West Indies are a force to reckon with in the shortest format of the game.
In a video shared by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Rohit talked about the series and said that it was always good to get some off in order to rejuvenate. He said:
“It’s always nice to have some time off and get refreshed. I am pretty excited to be back and can’t wait to get the series started. It’s going to be an exciting one, at the same time a challenging one as well as we do understand the potential that the West Indies team has, particularly in this format. They cherish playing this format and it’s going to be a challenging one for us,”
Further, he added that the goal of the team was to learn something from each series. He said:
“At the same time, talking about our guys, everybody is looking ready to go. We will try and work out on a few things and achieve something from this series as well because that has always been our goal to achieve something from the series that we play,”
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 29, 2022
Meanwhile, the 5-match T20I series will be a crucial one for the Indian cricket team keeping in mind their preparations for the upcoming T20I World Cup 2022, which is scheduled to be played in Australia.
Rohit On India’s World Cup Defeat Last Year
Rohit also said that according to him, India was not playing conservative cricket in the shortest format last year ahead of the World Cup. He also talked about India’s defeat in the World Cup tournaments. Talking about the same, he said:
“We haven’t gotten the result in the World Cup, that does not mean we were playing bad cricket. And I do not agree that we were playing conservative cricket, if you lose 1-2 matches in the World Cup, it seems like we did not take the chances. If you look at the games we have played before the World Cup, we won 80 per cent of those. I do not understand how can you win these many matches if you are conservative,”
He added: “We lost the World Cup, but it can happen, but that does not happen we were not playing freely. Lately, it is not like we have completely changed something, we have just given players the freedom to express themselves. If you play freely, performances will come out. The people on the outside should maintain peace, the way we are playing cricket, there will be failures and the results might not go our way, but it is okay as we are trying something. It can happen that mistakes take place but that does not mean that the players are bad. With time, everyone has to change, we are changing, so people on the outside also need to change,”
Team India Squad for T20I series vs West Indies:
Rohit Sharma (Captain), Ishan Kishan, KL Rahul*, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, R Ashwin, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav*, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh.
