Ahead of the upcoming ICC World Test Championship final against Australia, India skipper Rohit Sharma has picked his top-most Test highlight from recent years.
The India skipper would be keen to guide the team to a historic triumph in the upcoming WTC final. Having already won all the limited-overs ICC trophies, both India and Australia can become the first team to win all the ICC trophies if they manage to win the WTC trophy. Australia are gearing up to play their maiden WTC final while India will be playing their second.
A win in the upcoming contest will also end India’s long wait for an ICC trophy. They have not won an ICC trophy since MS Dhoni led the team to a historic Champions Trophy triumph in 2013. Team India will be desperately hoping that Rohit Sharma finally end their decade-long wait for the trophy.
Rohit Sharma picks his top-most Test highlight:
Ahead of the mega clash, Rohit Sharma spoke about it with his Australia counterpart Pat Cummins, former players Ross Taylor and Ian Bell, and veteran commentator Harsha Bhogle. The 36-year-old was asked about his top-most Test highlight in recent years and he picked India’s victory in the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
It was a remarkable series for Team India as they defied all the odds to beat Australia by 2-1 in their own backyard. Not many had given them a chance to bounce back after Australia bowled them out for only 36 in the first Test to register a crushing win.
Things became worse when captain Virat Kohli returned home to attend the birth of his child. The team also suffered a number of big injury setbacks. However, stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane led the team brilliantly and India went on to stun the fancied hosts to register a memorable series win.
“Plenty actually”, Rohit said.
“The last couple of years specially, after Covid-19. You know the times weren’t that great. Specially the bubble, you didn’t know what to expect. Stuck indoors and the younger boys were quite upset about that.
“But again, you need to beat the odds and come out on top. I thought the way we played in Australia was probably the top highlight, I would say. After losing the first Test match in Adelaide and then coming back to win then shows the strength and the depth of the team as well because we had lot of injuries on that trip.
“I wasn’t part of the first two Test matches. I was part of the third and fourth one. I know as a team what we were going through. So a really tough time, but we held our nerves. Like Pat just said, we came out on top but there was a lot of groundwork that happened behind the scene as well.
A lot of the young players stepped in and turned things around for us. A lot of senior players were missing on that trip and that was certainly the best we played outside India. Again, the last series we played in India was another exciting series, difficult pitches and challenging ones. But we managed to go through that,” the India opener added.
Meanwhile, the ICC WTC Final between India and Australia is scheduled to be played from June 7 at the Oval in London.