India captain Rohit Sharma missed the recently-concluded T20I series against Sri Lanka due to a thumb injury and Hardik Pandya was named the captain as well. It led to the speculation that in the future Rohit might lead only in ODIs and Tests only. But, the Indian captain has cleared the air over his T20I career ahead of the ODI series against Sri Lanka, starting on Tuesday. He claimed that he has “not decided to give up” in the format.

“We have only six T20Is, three are over. So we’ll manage, you know to look after those boys till IPL. Then we’ll see what happens after the IPL. But certainly, I’ve not decided to give up the format,” Rohit said at a press conference. “At the moment I think it was made clear in the past that it’s a 50-over World Cup year for us. And for some of the guys it’s not possible to play all formats. If you look at the schedule, there were back-to-back matches, so we decided on just looking at some players’ workload that we wanted to make sure that they get enough break time and manage them. I definitely fall in that (category) as well”

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Rohit Sharma also revealed the reason why Bumrah was ruled out of the ODI series on the eve of the first ODI. He also shared the openers fir the game as well.

“Jasprit Bumrah felt stiffness while bowling at nets in National Cricket Academy,” he said. “Unfortunate that we won’t be able to play Ishan Kishan. We have to give Gill a fair run,” he added.

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However, in the ODIs, the return of veteran players Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul and also Shreyas Iyer will give the much-needed boost. Meanwhile, India have a packed ODI calendar – 15 matches excluding the Asia Cup – within 10 months in the build-up to the World Cup later this year as well.