“It is a challenge to not win an ICC trophy for nine years,” says Indian skipper Rohit Sharma
India failed to go past the group stage in last year’s World Cup in the United Arab Emirates and have not won a World Cup since winning the 50-overs championship on home soil in 2011.
“It’s been a long since we won the World Cup,” Rohit, who is captaining India for the first time in a World Cup, told the India cricket board’s website.
“Obviously, the goal and the entire thought process is to win the World Cup, but we realise that we need to do a lot of things well to get there, so we’ll take it one step at a time.”
At the previous tournament in the UAE, India lost their opening encounter to Pakistan and were also defeated by New Zealand before exiting at the Super 12 stage. Rohit stated that it was critical to concentrate on each game as it came.
From leading India for the first time in ICC World Cup to the team's approach in the #T20WorldCup ! 👌 👌
💬 💬 In conversation with #TeamIndia captain @ImRo45!
Full interview 🎥 🔽https://t.co/e2mbadvCnU pic.twitter.com/fKONFhKdga
— BCCI (@BCCI) October 19, 2022
“We can’t plan ahead of time. You really can’t think about semi-finals and finals right now,” said the opener, whose form has been a source of concern for the team.
“You simply need to focus on each team you’re going to face and do your hardest to perform your best and prepare properly against each team to ensure we’re moving in the correct path.”
There is a lot of excitement around India’s first match on Sunday, against Pakistan, but Rohit says his team must not get caught up in the moment.
“It’s a significant game since we’re kicking off our campaign. But, at the same time, we want to be calm and focused on what we need to accomplish as people, since it will be the key for us.
“If individuals can remain cool and composed during the game, we will get the desired goal.”
“We said, we know where the World Cup is happening, and we made a very conscious decision of going to Australia a little earlier than expected because we were supposed to play the series against South Africa which unfortunately we all had to miss to prepare for this big event. That is something that was happening in the background right after the World Cup. We know how key the preparation is. A lot of the guys who are part of this team have not been to Australia, so that was also one of the reasons we wanted to come here early.
“We had a great time in Perth. We were there for nine days, and then we came to Brisbane. We prepared, we played a couple of practice games in Perth just to get used to the conditions, the pitches. Obviously you can’t travel all around Australia and play on all pitches, but we could get whatever we could get. I thought Perth was the right time for us to start. Obviously, the time difference is not too much, also, so you can easily get acclimatised to the time zone, and that was also one of the reasons. I thought the way we went about the entire Perth leg was good for us. We could specifically focus on certain things when it comes to batting, and the bowlers could work on certain things for all this unique time, and we were lucky enough to get that time in hand to prepare ourselves and come here to Melbourne.”
“We’ve been going through a lot of numbers all these days about how people have been successful in Australia. Although it’s a different time, not a lot of cricket has been played during this month in Australia, but it was important for us to get some kind of data around what happens in October-November in Australia and what are the kind of people who have been successful here,” Rohit said.
“We saw a lot of things about how you need to be successful firstly as a team and then as an individual, as well. We went through all of it, but obviously, like I said, it’s a bit of both. Sometimes you just feel that ‘this guy is bowling pretty well, you need to just get him to play the game; he’s in good form’. On the other side, you will look at the matchups, as well. It’s a bit of both. On that given day, whatever we feel is the right playing 11, we will go by that. I certainly want to keep my mind open on that when it comes to playing 11. We don’t want to get stuck with one particular way of making your playing 11. We want to be open about it.
“That’s how we have prepared all our guys, as well. The message was given long way before we came here that if we need to change one or two players for the matchups for what sort of conditions we are playing in, guys will be ready for it. So it’s not a last-minute thing where we are changing the players. This is the talk that has happened in the team long way back, and guys are ready for it.”
“Yes, it is a challenge to not win an ICC trophy for nine years, if I am not wrong. The last one we won was in 2013. It has been a challenge with the team like us, there are a lot of expectations, we are certainly little disappointed with that. This tournament gives us that chance to change it and do well. We certainly know we have to play our best cricket to do well here. We need to take it one game at a time, and then go ahead.”
