As the Cricket World Cup 2023 begins, the Indian cricket team would look to end the long and excruciating wait for an ICC title. Having last won the ODI World Cup in 2011 and an ICC title in 2013, it’s been a decade since India tasted such success at the international stage.
India captain Rohit Sharma, who will be leading the team in his first ODI World Cup, opened up on his captaincy stint in the Indian team, admitting that it’s absolutely fair that Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni got the role before him.
In an interview with Indian Express, Rohit said that the ideal time to get the captiancy of the national team would’ve been 26-27 but it’s not possible to always get what one wants.
“Obviously, you want to be at your peak for this, say when you are 26-27. But you cannot always get what you want. You are talking about the Indian captaincy and there have been stalwarts in the Indian team. Many more players deserved to be the captain of the team. I had to wait for my turn and that’s absolutely fair enough. The guys before, Virat was before me, so was MS (Dhoni),” he said.
Rohit also gave examples of a few other stalwarts of the Indian team who didn’t get to captain the national team on a full-time basis for long. “Just look at the names that are missed out: Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag … these are all stalwarts of Indian cricket. Not to forget Yuvraj Singh. He never captained India. Yuvraj has been such a match-winner for India, he should have been the captain at some stage but he didn’t get it. That’s life. I got it now and I am grateful for it. I would rather have it when I know how to captain a team, when I know what is required and all. Rather than when I don’t know the ABCD of captaincy. So in that respect, this is good.”
On India’s ambition of winning the World Cup title, Rohit said that the Indian team wants to keep the pacers fresh, and hence, have selected more of them. “A team needs to play 11 games to reach the World Cup final. Last time we played this format was in 2019, but to play 11 ODIs in one-and-half months is not easy. It’s a long World Cup. We don’t want any of our pacers to break down. Hence we have selected more of them.”
