Image Credit- PTI
For Rohit Sharma, the past six days and a month have
been quite difficult. It must have seemed like the end of the world for him
when they lost the World Cup final, but he had to gather the strength to move
on. Even though there have been rumours that he may captain India in T20Is, he
has subsequently lost his captaincy with the Mumbai Indians. Since India’s 2022
T20 World Cup semi-final defeat, he has not participated in the shortest format
for the team.
Rohit addressed the wink-wink nudge-nudge query on his
chances of making the T20 World Cup, but he remained ambiguous. This is as he
prepares for the Test series in South Africa.
When asked if some of the senior players thought that
the T20 World Cup and the Tests in South Africa, where they had never won a
series, would be a healing balm for the heartache caused by the ODI World Cup,
Rohit responded in the negative. He talked about how important the South Africa
series is and how everyone wants to win there, not just the senior team.
Then Rohit was asked if the same desperation exists
for the T20 World Cup six months down the line. “Desperation is to play
cricket,” Rohit said. “Everybody has that desperation. Everybody
wants to play. Everybody wants to do well. Wherever you get a chance, you want
to do well. I know what you are trying to say, but you will get the answer in
good time.”
India’s first shot at glory, a balm if you will,
starts in Centurion on Tuesday. Rohit spoke about moving on from the World Cup
loss and the significance of this series.
“Up until that final, the way we played, you
know, you expect to go an inch further as well,” Rohit said. “But
unfortunately, we couldn’t do it. That was the hard part for us, all of us, to
take because honestly, all these years, we’ve worked really hard for all this.
And then you saw in how we managed to play the first 10 games. And then the
finals, there are certain things that we didn’t do well in the finals, which
obviously cost us the game, but up until then, I thought there was not many
things that we could point out that we didn’t do this right, we didn’t do that
right.
“Obviously [moving on] from a loss like that, it
is hard. But there’s so much happening in life. There’s so much cricket
happening. You’ve got to find that strength to move on from that. It took time
for me as well to come out of that. But, you know, you gotta look forward. And
honestly, we got a lot of encouragement from the outside world after that
finals as well. And that motivated me personally to make sure I get up and
start doing my job again.”