India captain Rohit Sharma remains one of the best batters of his generation. His 5 centuries in the 2019 ODI World Cup made headlines but unfortunately for India, the team went on to exit the tournament in the semi-final stage as well. Rohit, meanwhile, explained his captaincy mindset to veteran Indian wicket-keeper batter Dinesh Karthik and shared the importance of giving freedom to players without thinking about the statistics.

In a chat with Karthik on Jio Cinema, Rohit said, “It is quite draining, but that is what you sign up for. When you take the responsibility, I think when the opportunity came to me to lead the team, I was excited. In the last 7-8 years, I’ve been part of that core group decision-making, vice-captain. I led in Virat’s absence a few times when he was not there, but yeah, obviously it’s a huge honour to be captaining your country. You know, I have seen many greats who have captained the team stalwarts in their way, so to be alongside them, you know, it’s a great honour. Great privilege.”

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However, Rohit Sharma said that he had his mind made up as soon as he became the full-time captain of the Team across formats. For him, ‘numbers are overrated’, and he gave his own example to this as well.

“I wanted to bring a certain change. Players going out there and playing with a lot of freedom, that statistical side of cricket. I want to completely take it out of this team. People are not looking at numbers. People are not looking at their personal scores and just play the game. Numbers are overrated. In India, we do talk a lot about numbers and all of that. But like, yeah, I got five hundreds in 2019 World Cup but kya hua uska, haar gaye na (but what happened, we still lost)?” Rohit Sharma concluded.