Rohit Sharma has replaced Virat Kohli as India’s captain in limited-roster internationals and first spoke about his newfound responsibilities in an interview with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) website. Rohit, who also replaced out-of-form Ajinkya Rahane as Test’s vice-captain, said he is not bothered by “conversations taking place outside” and is focused on his work. “When you play cricket for India it will always be high pressure. The pressure will always be there; a lot of people talk about the positives and negatives, but for me personally as a cricketer, not as a captain as a cricketer, for me it’s important to focus on my work and not what people are talking about because you have no control over that,” Rohit said in a video posted on Twitter by the BCCI.
SPECIAL – @ImRo45‘s first interview after being named #TeamIndia‘s captain of the white ball comes at https://t.co/Z3MPyesSeZ.
Stay tuned for this feature pic.twitter.com/CPB0ITOBrv
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 12, 2021
“I’ve talked about this a million times and I’ll keep saying that and that’s the message to the team; even the team understands that when we play a high-profile tournament, there’s a lot of conversation,” he added.
“It’s just important for us to focus on what we have in hand, which is winning matches, playing the way you are known to play. I think the conversations that take place outside are not important. For us it is important what we think of each other and that is more important.
“What I think about x, y, z is important because you want to create a strong bond between the players and that’s what will help us achieve the goal we want. Rahul (Dravid) bhai is clearly going to help us with that . so we’re looking forward to that.”
Rohit’s first stint as a full-time ODI skipper is next month’s series against South Africa.
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Under Rohit’s captaincy, India has played 10 ODI matches and won eight of them.
Rohit also led India in the triumphant 2018 Asia Cup campaign.
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