Rohit puts to rest shadow of past: ‘Yes, we have not won; it is fine… It happens’

So who will win the Cup? “I don’t have an answer for it. How can I say that now? All I can hope is that the team is in a good space. Everybody is fit and fine. That’s all I can hope for. I cannot say beyond this. Space is such an important factor and it’s a very key thing now,” he said.

Sharma also stressed he would be glad if the expectations from the fans aren’t too high. “What people are expecting we can’t control. In India wherever we go, be it airports or hotels, they say, ‘World Cup jeetna hai sir’ (You have to win the World Cup). It happens everywhere. It will never stop,” he said with a smile.

India’s record in the ICC events has been a point of contention. They have often done well to reach the business end of the tournaments but have been unable to win the knockout is fine… It happens’ games that matter.

In 2015, India reached the semifinal only to lose to Australia. Next time, in 2019, they lost in the semifinals again – to New Zealand. In the two recent T20 World Cups, in UAE in 2021, and in Australia in 2022, the team failed to make it to the final.

Last year in Australia, Sharma had taken over the captaincy from Virat Kohli but the jinx had continued. Now he has a chance to leave a legacy, but he said he doesn’t like to think in those terms.

“Every year there is an ICC trophy now; if you don’t win it’s an unsuccessful year! People just forget what good work has happened in these 10 months. Rightly, as the Indian cricket team, we are expected to win major trophies. We are one of the top teams in the world. We have to be good at it. It has been disappointing for sure,” Sharma said.

At 36, this could be his last World Cup as a leader and probably as a player. Does he feel that the captaincy came to him at the right time or was it delayed? “Obviously, you want to be at your peak for this, say when you are 26-27. But you cannot always get what you want. You are talking about the Indian captaincy and there have been stalwarts in the Indian team. Many more players deserved to be the captain of the team. I had to wait for my turn and that’s absolutely fair enough. The guys before, Virat was before me, so was MS (Dhoni),” he said.

“Just look at the names that are missed out: Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag … these are all stalwarts of Indian cricket. Not to forget Yuvraj Singh. He never captained India. Yuvraj has been such a match winner for India, he should have been the captain at some stage but he didn’t get it. That’s life. I got it now and I am grateful for it. I would rather have it when I know how to captain a team, when I know what is required and all. Rather than when I don’t know the ABCD of captaincy. So in that respect, this is good.”

Sharma also laid out the challenges ahead of playing a nearly two-month-long tournament that also was the reason for so much headache behind the team selection. “A team needs to play 11 games to reach the World Cup final. Last time we played this format was in 2019, but to play 11 ODIs in one-and-half months is not easy. It’s a long World Cup. We don’t want any of our pacers to break down. Hence we have selected more of them.”

On the comparison with the Class of 2011, Sharma said the Dhoni-led World Cup winning team had more experienced players. “In the 2011 team, everybody was a big name. Did any position change? No. You suddenly didn’t have to bring Harbhajan Singh at number 4-5 because all the guys are match winners in the positions that they play. Now we have a lot of newer faces. We had an injury problem, two players (Rahul and Shreyas) are making a comeback after two months. So, things looked different and selection calls had to be made.”