Quality that Virat has as batter and leader is required in our team: Rohit Sharma

PTI, Dec 9, 2021, 5:43 PM IST

A batter of Virat Kohli’s calibre and the qualities that he brings along with his leadership skills are very much required in the team, said India’s new white ball captain Rohit Sharma.

Rohit, who was already appointed T20 International captain, has also replaced Kohli as ODI captain. He feels that a captain’s job is 20 percent on the field and rest at the planning stage where he would like his men to be prepared for the worst, keeping crunch situations in major ICC event encounters in mind.

”A batter of his quality is always needed in the squad. To have an average of 50 plus in the T20 format, it is crazy and unreal. Obviously, with the experience, he batted and bailed India out so many times from difficult situations,” Rohit said during YouTube show ‘Backstage with Boria’.

For Rohit, a captain is as good as his team and it’s important for the world to know what the role of a captain is.

”A captain is there to ensure right players are playing, right combination is playing and obviously few tactical things that you need to look after,” he stated. For him a captain needs to walk the talk with his performance but otherwise stand at the back and put an arm around teammates.

”Captain needs to stand at forefront while performing and for everything else needs to stand at the back.

”The reason I say that is he can make a difference by standing at the back because then he can make sure he puts his hand around everyone, that’s what I meant when I said you have to be least important member of the team.” For Rohit, a captain only has 20 percent work on field and 80 percent off it.

”My role is more on the outside than inside. Give roles to players who are expected to go out there. It happens off the field. Once you are on the field, you have only three hours and little you can change in them and there are 11 guys playing and you have to look after all,” he explained.

”On field, you can’t change too much,” said the new skipper.

He has five trophies with Mumbai Indians but he believes that he had very little role in the success as team management had created a formidable unit.

What’s the plan at 10/3 in major games

Rohit said he can’t pinpoint on what exactly went wrong in last three ICC events, 2017 Champions Trophy final, 2019 World Cup semi-final and this year’s T20 World Cup.

”It was the initial phase where we lost. I want to see that we prepare for the worst like a 10 for 3 situation. That’s how I want to move forward and guys batting at Nos 3, 4, 5 and 6 should be prepared. Nowhere it’s written that from 10/3, you can’t score 190.” ”Suppose we are 10/2 in first two overs. What do we do? What is the plan? I want to put ourselves in that situation. We have got some games (ahead of T20 WC) to try and test that.” For Rohit it has happened thrice –twice against Pakistan and once versus New Zealand.

”The quality of bowling (in these matches) has been exceptional. It has happened three times. Hope it does not happen for the fourth time,” he said.