India's new white-ball captain Rohit Sharma has said that his team, especially the middle order batters will have to prepare themselves to deal with the worst case scenario, in order to win ICC trophies going ahead.
In the last four years, India have lost in the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy, the semifinal of the 2019 ODI World Cup and crashed out in the group stage of the 2021 T20 World Cup. One common factor on all the occasions has been the team's failure to recover from an early loss of wickets.
Therefore, Rohit now wants his teammates to learn from past experiences and prepare themselves before the next World Cup.
"We lost the Champions Trophy, the 2019 world cup and even this T20 world cup. That initial phase of the game is where we lost the game. That's something I will keep in mind. I will see that we have to prepare for the worst. We have to prepare for when the team is 10/3. And that is how I want to move forward and get the message across to the boys," Rohit said in a YouTube show 'Backstage with Boria'.
"The guys who are batting at 3,4,5.6 .. there is nowhere written that if you are 10 for 3, you can't get to 189-190 or more. I want the guys to prepare in that fashion.
"Let's say we are playing the semifinal and we are 10 /2 in the first two overs , what do we do? What's the plan? I want to put ourselves in that situation again and see if we can respond to that. We have games before the world cup to test that out," he added.
The 34-year old star opener also highlighted that there is a similarity between all three games that India lost - two Pakistan games and one New Zealand game in three ICC tournaments.
"There is a similarity in all the three games we lost. Two Pakistan games and one New Zealand game in the three ICC tournaments. That can happen. I do understand that the quality of bowling was exceptional at that point. But it has happened three times. I hope it doesn't happen for the fourth time," said Rohit.
"It will be about seeing how we can plan for that. Whether we can go in and counterattack straight from ball one, whoever the batter goes in. And I don't want people, the fans, to think that 'oh we are 10 /2 and what shot is he playing?' They need to understand that this is the plan of the team.
"I just want the batters and bowlers to go out there and do what they want. And by that I don't mean they are doing their own stuff but it's a plan. Something has to change. There needs to be a change," he added.
India last won an ICC title in 2013 under M S Dhoni's captaincy when they beat England in the final of the Champions Trophy. And Rohit also feels it's important to win World Cups as winning the championship always stays with the team.
"When you play the sport, you want to achieve the best. And I feel the best I feel is winning the championship. You might score many runs, many hundreds but winning that championship always stays with you. You know why? Because that's a collective effort from the team. At the end of the day, we play a team game. It's not an individual sport. So, what you achieve as a team is very very important to me," he said.
"It's something that I want to achieve that team goal - which is to win the championships. We have a few World Cups coming up. There are a lot of things we need to do to get that championship. We have the team, players, the support staff now to go get it. What we do prior to the World Cup is important," he added.
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