The Indian batter and former captain of the ODI side, Rohit Sharma, expressed his excitement for the Australian tour and said that he liked playing against the present 50-over world champions.
Rohit was speaking during the CEAT Cricket Ratings Awards in Mumbai when he was presented with a memento for winning the ICC Champions Trophy as a captain.
Speaking ahead of the Australian tour, which will begin on October 19 with three ODIs-the only form of cricket ‘Hitman’ currently engages in-Rohit said, “I love that team, I love playing with them.”
The ‘Hitman’ is an undisputed all-time great of the ODI brand with 11,168 runs from 273 matches and 265 innings at an average of 48.76 and a strike rate of 92.80 with 32 centuries and 58 fifties. He is the fourth-highest run-getter for India in ODIs.
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He goes well in Australia, racking up 1,328 runs in 30 matches and innings at an average of 53.12 and a strike rate in excess of 90, along with five tons and four scalps with the best being 171*.
However this time there would be something new for the player, for, instead of captaining the side, he would be playing under the captaincy of that very partner of his in batting: young Shubman Gill, who, as a young captain, has evidently shown promise so far in Test cricket, earning a well-earned 2-2 draw away from home against England and presently leading 1-0 in the two-match series against West Indies at home. It would indeed be interesting to see how Rohit goes about his batting free from captaincy vice.
“Talking about winning the T20 World Cup in 2024, the ICC Champions Trophy was a turning point for his team that, after failing to get over the line, especially after their 10-wicket loss to England in the T20 World Cup 2022 at Adelaide, decided to hang up their old clothes and don new ones. Everyone was brought under that kind of thinking to make it easy for him and for his coach, Rahul Dravid.
“It is not about one year of work or two years of work. We had come so close to winning the trophy many times (during the 2014 T20 World Cup finals against Sri Lanka and the 2016 T20 WC semis versus West Indies), but we could not quite get over the line. That is where everyone decided that we needed to do something different. One or two players cannot do it. You need everyone to buy into that thought. The team did well in that respect, and it helped me and Rahul Dravid as we were planning for the T20 World Cup and then further for the Champions Trophy,” he added.
Following the defeat against England in Adelaide, the team went into a more fearless approach, especially in powerplay. During the coming ODI World Cup, openers Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill put aside any thoughts for personal milestones, firing away from the very first ball with Virat Kohli acting as the safety net to stabilize the situation whenever anything went wrong. It was Rohit-Gill fireworks that gave the rest of the team time to tire out the bowlers with adept strike rotation and aggressive attacking and pull off record-breaking batting feats.
Still, all it took was Pat Cummins, being strategically brilliant, and Travis Head‘s counter-attacking ton to shatter India’s 10-match win streak, win the World Cup at Ahmedabad, and leave Team India tearful and shattered. The learning from the loss, thus, took India on the heights of winning the T20 WC and CT 2025 without being even challenged.
Since he first donned the Captain’s armband in 2017 for ODI cricket, Rohit has led India in 56 ODIs, with 42 wins and 12 losses; one no-result and one tied match. With a 75% win rate, he is statistically one of the very best white-ball captains of all time.
India, under Rohit, won the Asia Cup in 2018 and 2023, and was the runner-up in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 at home and the ICC Champions Trophy held in Dubai this year. Arguably, one of the greatest runs of white-ball captaincy saw Team India lose just one out of 23 games across three ICC tournaments and win two titles.
