Team India skipper Rohit Sharma still remembers his reaction after missing out on India's World Cup at home in 2011. On April 2, that year, India would win their second only ODI World Cup title in their own backyard, but Rohit wasn't part of that contingent.
11 years on, yesterday, as the nation celebrated the 11 anniversary of that historic triumph, Rohit Sharma opened up on his reaction after missing out of India's squad. He recalled that he was on national duty in South Africa, when he first got the news, and at the time, the 34-year-old had nobody to talk to.
Taking a trip down the memory lane, Rohit, in a recent chat with India Women's team player Jemimah Rodrigues, Rohit revealed how he kept thinking of what went wrong for him.
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"It is very hard. Honestly, it's not easy because World Cup is something that you always dream of playing and being part of the World Cup. And plus, contributing for the team's success. I still remember I was in South Africa at that point and we were playing the series when we got the news," Rohit Sharma recalled.
He added, "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."
The 'Hitman' further opened up on how he felt after the snub, and how he recovered from the low point, which would go on to completely change his life.
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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," stated the Indian skipper.
He further continued, "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."
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Undoubtedly, the Nagpur-born batter has since come a long way. He made the cut for the subsequent two editions of the World Cup in 2015, and 2019, hitting a staggering 648 runs in the latter, comprising of five centuries.
Having been handed the duties of the Indian team in all thee-formats now, Rohit is gearing up for the ICC T20 World Cup later this year in Australia.
