India captain Rohit Sharma wasn’t part of the team’s 2011 ODI World Cup squad as they went on to win the title at home. Rohit was expecting to be part of the campaign but was left heartbroken when he was not selected.
Rohit, who has since been part of two ODI World Cups, was left dejected and frustrated but that phase toughened him up and pushed him to improve his game.
IPL FULL COVERAGE | SCHEDULE | RESULTS | ORANGE CAPE | PURPLE CAP
Rohit recalled how he was alone sitting in his room thinking about what went wrong. “It is very hard. Honestly, it’s not easy because World Cup is something that you always dream of playing and being part of the World Cup. And plus, contributing for the team’s success. I still remember I was in South Africa at that point and we were playing the series when we got the news. I had no one to talk to about this. At that point, I was just in my room sitting and thinking about what went wrong and what I could have done better and all of that,” Rohit said during a conversation with India women cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues for Dream11.
“But I think, it’s important that at that stage I was, we’re talking about like tens years from now, and I was only 23 or 24 at that point. So I knew that there’s lot of cricket left in me and it’s not the end of the world and it was more important for me to comeback from this. What has happened has happened, there is nothing you can change about it,” he added.
Rohit had a record-breaking outing with the bat at the 2019 ODI World Cup where he peeled off five centuries – the most by any batter in a single edition. And has today become India captain across formats, taking over from Virat Kohli.
“You can be disappointed, you can be frustrated, and that’s allowed because it’s only natural. You get dejected and frustrated. But in that frustration, I did not want to get out of my path and I wanted to do things I thought of which is to get better as a cricketer and see what went wrong. It was a very tough time and I went by a philosophy of thing that okay tough moments will not last forever but tough people will so I wanted to get really tough and how I do my skill training and all of that,” he said.
Get all the latest updates on Cricket News, Cricket Photos, Cricket Videos, IPL 2022 Live Updates and Cricket Scores here