IND vs NZ: Won’t try to focus too much on the opposition – Rohit Sharma | News

“For us, when we play in front of any team, each team brings different challenges. New Zealand is a different team, their challenges will be different. We have played a lot of cricket with them. We know their players, their strengths and weaknesses. But, I have said this many times, what is important for us is to do better than what we did in the previous series. No matter who the opposition is, what is important for us is to do better,” said Rohit.

“So, our focus will be on how we can do better than what we did in the previous series. We will try not to focus too much on the opposition team and focus more on ourselves,” he added.

Rohit on Bengaluru conditions

Talking about the conditions in Bengaluru, Rohit too is wary of the rain prediction for the Test match.

“It all depends on the conditions now. Even today, there has been a lot of rain. The pitch is under the cover. So, we want to take that call when we come here in the morning tomorrow. And again, it depends on match-to-match, what sort of pitch we play on. Based on that, we want to decide what is going to be our best playing eleven. We keep our options open for playing three seamers and three spinners as well. But again, we want to just come here tomorrow morning and see what the conditions are like and then take a call,” said Rohit.

Rohit Sharma optimistic about a full game in Bengaluru

Rohit is still expecting a full game in Bengaluru despite the weather predictions and is ready to adapt to any situation on the given day. He said, “So, even before our time is left, we will still go for an update on the surroundings. When we came to Kanpur, we had no idea that it was going to be washed out for two days and then we were not going to have a full game. But we managed to get a win, and we managed all our plans based on how much time we had in the game. And based on that, we made a plan and we went on with it. So, I don’t know what it is going to be here. But I expect to have a full game.”

Will Mohd Shami be available for Australia tour?

Rohit Sharma also talked about the injured Mohammad Shami and gave an update on how his recovery is going so far.

“I mean, to be honest, right now it is pretty difficult for us to make a call on him, whether he will be fit for this series or the Australia series. You know, he recently had a setback. He had swelling in his knee, which was quite unusual while he was in the process of getting fit, getting close to 100%. He had swelling in his knee. That put him back a little bit in his recovery. So, he had to start again fresh. Right now, he is at NCA. He is working with the physios, the doctors at NCA. We are keeping our fingers crossed,” Rohit said about Shami.

“We want him to be fit. We want him to be 100% fit, more than anything else. We don’t want to bring an undercooked Shami to Australia,” he added.

Rohit on the need of bench strength

With the likes of Mayank Yadav and Harshit Rana travelling with the squad, Rohit expressed the need for bench strength and how his side wants to have these kinds of players around who can come in and contribute to the side whenever needed.

“We want to create a bench strength where tomorrow if anything happens to anyone, we are not worried, and we don’t want to be worried or too heavily reliant on a few individuals. That’s not the right thing to do. We want to look at the future, at the same time try and make sure that we get the right guys in as well,” Rohit said.

First Published: Oct 15 2024 | 4:46 PM IST