Newly appointed white-ball captain Rohit Sharma had enjoyed the company of Rahul Dravid in the series against New Zealand. The skipper emphasized keeping the atmosphere light and cheerful in the dressing room which would make players comfortable and relaxed.
In an interaction with BCCI.TV, he said, “Working with Rahul bhai, I mean it was only three-odd games but it was fantastic. We have seen how he’s played his cricket – very tough, hard. And at the same time, there’s a sense of relaxation as well, you know, because it’s important to keep the atmosphere light and cheerful when you are doing a job on the field which is so demanding. You need to have an atmosphere where people can relax, just chill around, those kinds of things.”
“We need to learn to recover from situations like 10/3”- Rohit Sharma
Noteworthy that Rohit Sharma made his international debut under Rahul Dravid’s captaincy in 2007 when he was given the ODI cap at Belfast. Now he is excited to work with him as a coach. He told, ” I had various interactions with him about my personal game. It’s good to have him on board.”
Under Rohit Sharma, India played 8 series so far in ODIs and T20Is and won 7 of them. The only loss was the T20 series against New Zealand in 2019. So it has been easy going for him however he is prepared for bigger and tougher challenges in the future. He also pointed the fact of India’s over-dependency in the Top-order.
He said, “When the challenges are there and they are tough challenges – how you come out of those is very important. I think in the past, we have been put in those situations before where we’ve been 10-3, 15-2 something like that and we’ve failed to recover. That’s something we need to keep in mind moving forward. That’s one of the areas. There are other areas that we need to keep improving as a team because getting better as a team doesn’t stop.”
In the 2019 ODI World Cup Semifinal, India famously collapsed to 5/3 after cruising on the league stage. So that’s the one major task in Rahul Dravid’s hands to prepare India’s lower order who can take them from such situations.
Rohit Sharma’s next challenge will be South Africa where last time India beat the hosts by 5-1 in the ODI series and also clinched the T20I series by 2-1. In the decider of the T20I series, Rohit Sharma captained the side in absence of Virat Kohli.
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