India opener Rohit Sharma dismissed speculations of his ODI future, affirming that he remains fully committed to continuing in the role after smashing a record-breaking hundred against England at Lord’s on Sunday.
After an iffy start to the series with scores of 11 and 26, Rohit’s spot had come under scrutiny. The former India skipper had endured a lean run up until the series decider in England, scoring just 241 runs in eight innings, averaging 30.12 and a strike rate of 88.60.
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The Indian Express had reported that while Rohit remains determined in his role towards the 2027 ODI World Cup, the selection committee wants to give youngsters like Yashasvi Jaiswal, who has been waiting in the wings, a chance, in the forthcoming chances.
“Look, my job is with the bat, come and play, represent my country, represent the team. That’s what I’ve been told to do since I made my debut so that’s what I’m going to do. The noise, since I made my debut, was there. And till the time I’m going to stay here, it’s always going to be there. So it doesn’t really matter too much. What matters is what I do on the field. Try and contribute to the success of the team,” Rohit said in a bcci.tv video.
“That’s all my focus is right now. And let the noise be there. If there’s no noise, there’s no fun. My job is inside, their job is outside. That’s how I look at it,” he added.
‘Understand each other so much’ – Rohit on Kohli
Set a daunting 388-run chase by Harry Brook’s men, the highest at the Home of Cricket, India were steered by Rohit’s stoic century, his 34th in the format.
Playing in his 400th international match alongside Virat Kohli, the veteran duo put on 113 for the second wicket, their 21st century partnership in ODIs, bettered only by Tillakaratne Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara (26).
“We’ve played our entire career together so it was nice to have him in the middle. We’ve had lot of partnerships. It’s always fun batting together. We understand each other so much and yeah, it’s always nice in the middle bouncing off ideas, try and see what we can do. So there was [a] lot of conversation that was going around in between when we were batting.”
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Rohit became the first Indian to smash a century at Lord’s with his eighth ODI century in England, the most by a visiting batter in any country. The 39-year-old also surpassed Sachin Tendulkar with his 46th century as an opener for India across formats.
Despite the century, India failed to close out the chase after his dismissal in the 39th over, falling short of a record chase by 27 runs.
“A little disappointed with the result because I thought we were playing really good cricket. How we started in Birmingham, we played some really good cricket. We fell a little short at Cardiff with the bat actually. It was not enough [of a] score on the board. And then here again there was a massive total to chase. We tried everything we could with the bat but again fell 20-25 runs short,” said Rohit.
