Veteran Indian batting great Rohit Sharma is well aware of the “noise” surrounding his future in international cricket, but he dismissed it, saying he would rather to concentrate on scoring runs rather than battling it.
Rohit failed to prevent India’s 27-run defeat at the Lord’s on Sunday with a facile 138, which didn’t seem like him and may have been an attempt to hide the anguish and insult he must have felt.
“The noise, since I made my debut was there. Till I am going to stay here, it is always going to be there, so it doesn’t really matter too much,” the 39-year-old, who became the oldest Indian centurion and first from the country to score a ton in 50-over cricket, told BCCI.TV.
“What really matters is what I do on the field, try and contribute to the success of the team. That’s where all my focus is. Let the noise be there, if there is no noise there is no fun. My job is inside, there job is outside, that’s how I look at it.
“My job is with bat, come and play, represent my country, that’s what I have been told to do since I made my debut, so that’s what I am going to do,” added the man, who is within touching distance of 12,000 ODI runs.
His 34th ODI century was one of his greatest knocks in recent memory while he was under pressure. Playing in England has always been enjoyable, according to Rohit.
“I love playing in England. The atmosphere, the grounds, the pitches, when you turn up to play any format over here, it challenges you in different ways. And that’s what you want as a cricketer. To be challenged in every way possible. I enjoyed out there in the middle,” he said.
Despite the difficult chase of 388, the century stand with Virat Kohli, who hammered 74, increased hopes of an unlikely victory. Even though it didn’t happen, their on-pitch comprehension was just as fluid as it was 15 years ago.
“We (him and Kohli) played our entire career together, so it was nice to have him in the middle, we have had so many partnerships. It’s fun batting together as we understand each other so much, bouncing off ideas,” Rohit said.
After beginning the series with a victory in Birmingham, Rohit acknowledged that it was sad to lose.
“Little disappointed with the result as I thought we were playing good cricket. How we started off in Birmingham, we played good cricket. We fell a bit short in Cardiff with the bat not scoring enough runs.
“Here it was a massive total to chase and we tried whatever we could but we fell 20-25 runs short,” Rohit said.
Rohit defended the Indian pace attack, which had four bowlers with a combined experience of 51 ODIs.
“Again with bowling, you got to understand that these guys haven’t played a lot of ODIs and you got give them time. We can learn from this game, take things in our stride and when we again come across situation like this, we try and better ourselves,” he said.
“Disappointed with the result, we couldn’t finish off the game, we have to move on,” he signed off.
