AHMEDABAD: If M S Dhoni was Captain Cool, Rohit Sharma is certainly Captain Calm. A word he used 11 times in his 35-minute media interaction on the eve of the World Cup final against Australia, even as he mentioned “pressure” 13 times. Rohit is aware he is probably playing his last Cup and realises how massive an occasion this is for him and for some of his younger teammates.
With 10 wins on the trot in this World Cup, India went into the big final as favourites, but typically, Rohit tried to play it down. “I can see tense faces, but I can see laughter too... That is why this sport is so exciting because you see different emotions. There’s so much expectation. At airports, and hotels, people keep saying you must win the World Cup, you must score a hundred or take a five-for. It’s in your ears all the time. That is why guys have started using earphones,” he said.
"The crowd’s obviously going to be very one-sided, but also in sport there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent. That’s the aim for us tomorrow-Pat Cummins"
What would he tell his teammates? “Just going there and keeping it nice and easy, calm. I’d said it’ll be nice to win the World Cup. In the same tone, I want to say it now again. We don’t want to get too excited. We don’t want to feel too much pressure ... A balanced atmosphere and balanced thinking at this stage would be really nice.”
Speaking of balance, Rohit said the team would try to win it for head coach Rahul Dravid: “For him to ... give me that liberty to play the way we want to play, says a lot about him.”
