It could be fear of failure among country's elite batters that led to India's global title drought between 2011 and 2024, T20 World Cup winning former skipper Rohit Sharma said on Friday.
After the 50-over World Cup triumph in 2011 under the leadership of MS Dhoni, India waited till 2024 for another major trophy, winning the T20 World Cup under Rohit's captaincy.
“I have always believed that when the tide is going down, it’s not going to stay down forever. It will come up at some stage. But I didn’t think it would take 13 years. I didn’t think it would go down so much that it would take 13 years to come back up," Rohit said in a JioHotstar show..
"The last World Cup we won was in 2011, and then we won again in 2024. That’s 13 years. Yes, we did win the Champions Trophy in 2013, so technically it was an 11-year ICC trophy drought. But 11 years is still a long time," one of India's greatest captains said.
"We always believed that we had to keep doing the right things, and we did keep doing the right things. Unfortunately, something was missing. There was something we weren’t able to do. I felt it might have been a fear of failure creeping into all of us, maybe yes, maybe not, I don’t know, but that was my feeling." The former captain, who currently plays in the ODIs only, said the team management headlined by him and former head coach Rahul Dravid wanted to remove the fear by giving everyone freedom and clarity in their roles.
"We wanted to remove that fear. And how do you do that? By giving everyone freedom and clarity. By telling them, 'You are the guy, you are going to do the job for me, and no matter what happens, we will back you as much as we can.'.
"Along with that, giving clarity about their role and what we expect from them. I wanted to do this individually, to speak to players one-on-one and tell them, 'This is what we expect, this is your role.'.
"By doing this, you build a strong relationship with the player. And when the time comes for him to go out there and perform, he won’t be afraid. He will take it on. Because 'if the captain and coach have told me this is what they expect, I’m not going to be afraid to do it.'.
On how the 2019 ICC World Cup in England and Wales was a catalyst in the change in mindset and approach, he said, "The 2019 World Cup was a big lesson for me. I scored so many runs there, but we did not win the World Cup. So I asked myself, what is the use of this? What will I do with these runs?.
"Yes, they remain in your statistics column and all that, but for me, that was of no real use. That is when I decided that I would play for what makes me happy. That is why I started thinking differently in 2020..
"What I eventually implemented in 2022 and 2023 took me two years to adapt to, from 2020 to 2022. I realised that I had to play with intent and without any fear. Otherwise, it does not matter how many times I got out in the 40s or in the 90s; it never bothered me at all.”.
The 38-year-old right-handed batter said some players also talked about individual performances and he "had to take all of that out" from them.
“India is a very stats-obsessed country. We love talking about stats. Even among players, it is often about, ‘I scored so many runs, I did this, I did that.’ I had to take all of that out.
"Because at the end of the day, if you do not have a World Cup, all those stats do not matter. What will you do after 20 or 25 years with those runs and everything else.
"In my view, and this is my personal thinking, what really matters is having successful campaigns and winning trophies. That defines your career, that is when you can say that you have been successful in your cricketing career. This is my belief, this is what I think."
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