The veteran batter Rohit Sharma said that he remains unbothered by the criticism around his form, insisting that the critics have never affected his approach.
His statement comes after a brilliant century during the 3rd ODI test against England at Lord’s. The former captain has come under pressure after a continuous low score across formats, with speculation over his retirement gathering pace.
Before the final ODI against England, he managed to score only 241 runs in eight innings at an average of 30.12 and a strike rate of 88.60.
However, he shut down the critics with a stunning 34th ODI hundred and also his maiden hundred at Lord’s. Speaking to the media, Rohit Sharma said that he always focuses on contributing to the team’s success rather than paying attention to outside noise.
“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 to contribute to the success of the team.
“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.”
Rohit Sharma also made a 113-run partnership with Virat Kohli, which was the 21st-century partnership between the pair. They surpassed the Sangakkara and Tillakaratne pair, who are in the second place on all time list with 20 centuries. Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly stand at the top with 26 centuries.
Speaking on playing with Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma said, “We’ve played our entire career together, so it was nice to have him in the middle. We’ve had a 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, trying to see what we can do. So there was a] lot of conversation that was going around in between when we were batting,” added Rohit Sharma
Despite winning the first ODI, India lost back-to-back games and will be aiming to improve before the 2027 ODI World Cup.
