Mumbai: “Half of the guys were not even born when we won our first World Cup in 1983, and then when we won our second World Cup in 2011, half of the guys were not even playing the game,” said Rohit Sharma in the lead-up to India’s game against New Zealand on Wednesday.
Rohit’s math may not be particularly sound because none of the players in this current team are 40-years-old, least of all half of them, but his intention did come through. The Indian skipper was trying to explain that his side is a young one and they aren’t held down by the pressures of the past.
“…this current crop of players, they're very much into what is happening today, what can happen tomorrow. Those are the things they try and focus on. I don't see them talking about how we won the last World Cup, how we won our first World Cup,” he said.
“The focus is on how they can get better as a player, what they can bring to the team and what are the things they need to improve. So that's the beauty of the crop of players we have at this point in time. The focus is always on the present.”
While that admirable, even stoic, trait, has become a trademark of this side, they cannot ignore everything that has happened up until now for that would involve unlearning or forgetting the lessons those moments of adversity brought forth.
"Yeah, no, obviously, when you don't come through, obviously there's a lot of learnings, what went wrong, what as a team we could have done better, and things like that. But obviously, now, it's a completely different setup, a different set of players as well from what it was in 2019,” he said when asked about the learnings from the semifinal loss against the same side in the previous World Cup.
“Obviously we have taken our learnings from the previous World Cups, but again like I said there were different individuals in that game, different individuals now. So, I think things are moving pretty well at this point in time. And we would just like to continue in that fashion. What has happened in the past is not going to determine too much about what will happen tomorrow.”
New Zealand, oddly enough, have been a rather difficult opponent for India over the course of the last few years. They might not seem a team loaded with stars but they have role players who go about their job as well as anyone could.
“Whenever we've come up against New Zealand, we know that they are probably the most disciplined team in terms of how they want to play the game. And they play their cricket very smartly,” explained Rohit.
“They understand the opposition quite well. Obviously having played with a lot of our players in different stages of their careers, and different tournaments, they do understand the mentality of the opposition. It is the same for us as well. But, whenever we've played against them, the most disciplined team, I would say. And they've been very consistent for so many years now, playing semifinals and the finals of probably all ICC tournaments in the last, I don't know, maybe six, seven years, from 2015 onwards.”
“We have been closely following all the teams as to where their strength lies, where their weakness lies. And based on that, we try and go out there and play the game,” he added.