With a few Indian players struggling with injuries, from Jasprit Bumrah to Shreyas Iyer, much focus has been on how the IPL franchises handle the players considering the ODI world cup will be played in October this year. However, the Indian captain Rohit Sharma reckons he “doubts if that (players taking breaks during IPL) will happen but.”
“It’s all up to the franchises now. They own them now. We have given some indications to the teams but at the end of the day, its upto the franchises. And more importantly, its up to the players. They are all adults; they have to look after their bodies. If they feel it’s getting a bit too much, they can talk about it and take a break in one or two games. I doubt if that will happen, but,” said Rohit after India went down in the series decider to Australia.
Rohit also threw his weight behind Suryakumar Yadav, who fell for a first-ball duck for the third time in a row. In 1994, Sachin Tendulkar had fallen for three ducks in a row (against Sri Lanka and two games against West Indies). Tendulkar’s wasn’t all first-ball ducks, if that’s any consolation to his fans and to the trivia hunters.
“He only played three balls in three (games) this series, yaar. I don’t know how much to look into it. He got three good balls, to be honest. Today, it wasn’t that good ball; he should have gone forward. He knows best. He plays spin so well. We have seen that over last couple of years. That’s why we held him back and give him that role for the last 15-20 overs where he can play his game, but it;’s really unfortunate he could only play three balls. That can happen to anyone. But the potential and ability is always there. He is just going through that phase right now.
He also threw his weight behind Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja, who fell late in the chase, going for big hits.
“If you look at the last few overs, it was probably more than run a ball. Someone had to take a chance. We don’t want to wait until the last couple of overs. We have always talked about fearless cricket. If someone feels they can take the bowlers on, we have given them complete freedom to do that. While doing that, there is a big possibility that they might not be able to achieve what they want to achieve, which is fair, and fine by us. You will learn by that. We will definitely not judge based on couple of poor shots. All these guys have lots of potential, they can play these shots whenever they want we want to keep encouraging them to go out there and do it often.
