The captain of the Indian cricket team, Rohit Sharma, remains one of the most fearsome batters of his generation. His five centuries in the 2019 ODI World Cup went down in the history books, but unfortunately for India, the team went on to exit the tournament in the semi-final stage. Rohit, having taken over Team India's captaincy on a full-time basis, explained his captaincy mindset to veteran Indian wicketkeeper batter Dinesh Karthik and highlighted the importance of giving freedom to players without caring about the statistics.
In a chat with Karthik, Rohit opened up about how draining the responsibility of captaincy is for the Indian team.
Rohit said, "It is quite draining, but that is what you sign up for. When you take the responsibility, I think when the opportunity came to me to lead the team, I was excited. In the last 7-8 years, I've been part of that core group's decision-making as vice captain. I led in Virat's absence a few times when he was not there, but yeah, obviously, it's a huge honor to be captaining your country. You know, I have seen many greats who have captained the team stalwarts in their way, so to be alongside them, you know, it's a great honor. Great privilege.”
He added, “I wanted to bring about a certain change. Players going out there and playing with a lot of freedom—that statistical side of cricket. I want to completely take it out of this team. People are not looking at numbers. People are not looking at their personal scores and just playing the game. The numbers are overrated. In India, we do talk a lot about numbers and all of that. But like, yeah, I got five hundred in the 2019 World Cup, but kyahuauska, haargayena?”