After having won the T20 World Cup 2024, Rohit Sharma is all set to lead the team in the ODI series against Sri Lanka. Post his T20 defeat, this is his first international game as well. However, this is also the first series for the head coach Gautam Gambhir and his support staff as well. Also, while reflecting on the start of India’s ‘new era’, he chose not to jump to conclusions about Suryakumar’s captaincy, given the short time as well.

“It’s early days and I don’t want to talk too much about it. He’s done his work well and let him do his work well. We should all be calm. We all consistently jump too quickly onto things on whether we win or if we lose. Let him consistently do well and we can relaxingly talk about it. It’s definitely a good start for them in that format. They played really well, played well as a unit which was really good and that is what Team India is all about, playing together as a team. And I’m sure the team is heading in the right direction,” he said in the pre-match presentation.

Rohit Sharma also expressed his excitement at starting a captain-coach relationship with Gautam Gambhir, given that the duo had been teammates earlier. While talking about his bond with the new head coach, Rohit Sharma also felt that the ease of their camaraderie should help the team as well.

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“Gautam Gambhir has played a lot of cricket firstly and he has been involved with a franchisee team as well sitting at the top. Like I said, it’s obviously going to be different from the previous coaching staff. Every human, every individual is different. Before when Rahul Dravid joined the team , we had Ravi Shastri so every individual works differently and I’m sure I know Gautam Gambhir for a long time now, we have played a little bit of cricket together and we have had a lot of chats together in the past. Now that he is here, he has got a very clear mind on what he wants to do with the team which is very good. We don’t want to plan too far ahead. We’re here to play three games so the goal/ idea is to try to take something back from these three games. Try and learn a lot about how we want to play ODI cricket and what we want to achieve in ODI cricket so it’s very exciting times,” he added.

Rohit Sharma, however, didn’t consider the three ODIs against Sri Lanka as ‘practice’ for their vision towards the 2025 Champions Trophy. While he said that exposure in the format would help, he also stressed on the need to balance the objectives around rotation without compromising on the win as well.

“See, we get asked questions like these a lot. The World Cup is coming, is this preparation for the World Cup? The Champions Trophy is coming, is this preparation for the Champions Trophy? See, it’s not a practice ground this, it’s still an international game. We will keep in our mind what we would like to achieve as a team but this is by no means preparation or practice or anything like that. We want to come here and play good cricket and get something out of the series, it is as simple as that. We don’t want to think about ‘let’s try this, let’s try that’. Of course, we want to try everything possible but sometimes you got to understand when you’re representing the nation, the quality of the cricket you want to play should remain the way it is and how we have played our cricket in the last few years. I think that is more important, more than thinking about it is preparation so let us go out and chill in Colombo,” he further added.

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However, he also opened up on the preferred playing XI.

“Ya, absolutely. It is a tough call, both are quality players. You know the abilities of both players, it is not easy to pick a player when you have good quality like that. That is what these two individuals are all about, they are match winners in their own way and they have won a lot of games for us in the past. It is always nice to have problems picking the team, like that. When you are discussing too much about who to pick and who not to, that means there is quality in the squad. I think it is a good thing to have these kinds of problems and I look forward to these kinds of problems till I’m captain. (smiling),” Rohit Sharma concluded.