“I was all alone in my room in South Africa,” Rohit Sharma recalls World Cup 2011 snub: Indian skipper Rohit Sharma recalls the time when he faced a snub from India’s ODI World Cup 2011 squad despite performing decently over the years. Sharma, on the day when India celebrated the 11th anniversary of India’s 2011 World Cup win, said that he had no one to talk to when he learnt about his snub from the Indian squad.
Every sportsperson in this world carries a dream of playing in the World Championships or Olympics at least once in his/her lifetime. In cricket, nothing is bigger than getting named in the World Cup squad and earning a chance to represent their country on the world stage.
Rohit Sharma in conversation with Jemimah Rodrigues revealed that he was shocked after not seeing his name in the WC squad. Sharma said that he was left thinking by himself about what went wrong in his batting that resulted in his snub.
“I still remember I was in South Africa at that point and we were playing the series when we got the news. I had no one to talk to about this. At that point, I was just in my room sitting and thinking about what went wrong and what I could have done better and all of that,” said Rohit Sharma.
The dashing batter further said that at that point in time, it was essential for him to focus on his path and improve as a cricketer rather than getting distracted by the past.
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“But I think, it’s important that at that stage I was, we’re talking about like tens years from now, and I was only 23 or 24 at that point. So I knew that there’s lot of cricket left in me and it’s not the end of the world and it was more important for me to comeback from this. What has happened has happened, there is nothing you can change about it,” he said.
“You can be disappointed, you can be frustrated, and that’s allowed because it’s only natural. You get dejected and frustrated. But in that frustration, I did not want to get out of my path and I wanted to do things I thought of which is to get better as a cricketer and see what went wrong. It was a very tough time and I went by a philosophy of thing that okay tough moments will not last forever but tough people will so I wanted to get really tough and how I do my skill training and all of that.”
Notably, Rohit Sharma made a drastic turnaround as a cricketer ever since the 2011 World Cup snub. The right-handed batter played for India in the 2015 and 2019 ODI World Cups.
The 2019 ODI World Cup goes as his best World Cup as far as his batting is concerned. Sharma mercilessly tormented the opposition and laced a massive 648 runs with a record five centuries on the World stage.
Rohit Sharma will be leading team India in the upcoming World Cup tournaments. He will spearhead the Men in Blue to the T20 World Cup 2022 along with ODI World Cup 2023 and the ICC World Test Championship 2023.
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