World Cup: Not like to have unfinished business, says Rohit Sharma ahead of Australia encounter in Chennai

As the Men in Blue take on the Kangaroos in their opening game at the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2023, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma said he would not like to be part of unfinished business while leading India to the trophy. Rohit would marry desperation and temper it with a game plan which he hopes will work wonders to all the swan songsters. Meenakshi Rao decodes Rohit's pre-match press conference.

Chennai:At 36, Rohit Sharma, the warrior of many pulls and shots and now Captain of the Indian team, says it will be nice to win the World Cup. The casual garb that he wears both in his utterances and his otherwise swashbuckling play, hides a dream and desperation that he is working hard to balance with grounded strategies, hard work and team-building exercises that will lead India to the trophy.

“It is a huge honour to be Captain, that too of a World Cup team. And yes, I would not like to be part of unfinished business. The greatest of them all (Sachin Tendulkar) thought it was unfinished business (to not have a World Cup to his name). In my book, the 50-over World Cup is the biggest event in Cricket. So, it’s a big deal for me,” he said at his pre-match Press conference at Chennai on Saturday.

Admitting that the Cup is the biggest prize in one’s career, he cautioned against unbalanced desperation which he said “can lead to so many other things. It is the biggest prize in one’s career.”

"Desperation can lead to so many other things. It is good to be hungry, but you need to find that balance for winning games and lifting the trophy. Luckily for us seniors, we know how to stay under that radar. We have to leave a lot of things to Almighty as well. Luck plays a big role,” he added.

For Rohit, this is the hugest moment of them all. The next World Cup he will be 40 and watching the campaign in the middle from his living room couch. Like him, Virat Kohli too would be looking for an opportunity to walk into the sunset with his idol Tendulkar’s record in his pocket. At 37, he is the fittest of them all and raring to reach the 51 centuries mark. R Ashwin, now 37, and in his last World Cup as a replacement for the injured Axar Patel, would understand what desperation means at this juncture of his career. That will push him into his original glory of being an attacking bowler and what Rohit is talking about is this desperation being tempered with a gameplan which will work wonders to all the swan songsters.

“We are quite confident skill-wise. What we have done in the past will not matter. We have to play good cricket. The Aussies being Aussies, we know how they play. We will focus on our strengths and assess the conditions here. The pitch here can be challenging, we have to assess how will we play, what line and length to maintain and which strokes to play,” he said.

The pitch at Chepauk, he added, changes colour a lot. “We will look at it on the day of the match to decide our strategy for the game. What shots, what length and line we will bowl to, we will look into it on match day. In Chennai, every day is a new day and everything changes everyday,” he said, talking about taking one game at a time and keeping it simple.

Much like Aussie skipper Pat Cummins, Rohit too talked about the luxury of having a multi-dimensional squad. “We batters bring a different dimension and style to the team. The qualities come when we are flexible and versatile. All of us have played a huge amount of cricket and know the conditions,” he said when asked how he talks to the team in the context of handling pressure.

He did not deny the role of pressure in summit games but said handling it would be the key, he said.

Being a Skipper and the lead batter for the team would mean a double whammy for him. “But both are different. That is where the experience of being here for 16 years, playing cricket, comes in. How you handle the pressure and go through the pressure has taught me that we need the mental strength to challenge the pressure. As players of many matches, Rohit and his team knows it has to go through pressure “so there is no point talking about it …. keeping it simple, we should focus on what we need to do as a team. There are strong mental characters in the squad who have come in through tough times in their careers. We can focus on what’s coming up tomorrow and keep it simple as that,” he said. That’s what he tells his team as a skipper.

“As a batter, I will give good starts and do the needful,” the veteran of as many as five centuries in the last edition of the World Cup said.

Rohit ruled out the role of conditions and home advantage in this World Cup. His argument was that too many teams have played too much cricket in Indian conditions with the IPL, bilateral series etc.

“The conditions are not going to matter to any team as they have played too much cricket here. So the alien element is gone now,” he said.