India have previously finished atop in the league stage of a World Cup. Remember 2019? Albeit not on an unbeaten note, like in the 2023 edition where India won all their nine matches in the round-robin stage, but the Virat Kohli-led side were the top-placed team at the end of the preliminary stage of the World Cup. Yet they faltered in the semifinal. As the Rohit Sharma-led team gears up for the big knockout game against New Zealand in Mumbai on Wednesday, the legendary Gautam Gambhir drew a comparison between the current Indian side and that of 2019.
Speaking to Star Sports, Gambhir pointed out the stable line-up that Rohit's team has had in the build-up to the event and during the World Cup as well as against the chopping and changing in 2019. The former World Cup-winning player hence credited the captain for bringing about that sense of security among the players and in the dressing room. He did, once again, highlight Rohit's record of five IPL trophies as a skipper but admitted that his captaincy is more than just stats.
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"Look, there is nothing which has changed from 2019 to 2023. There were so many changes that happened in 2019 as compared to the least amount of changes that has happened in 2023. A good captain and leader give you security, which makes the dressing room secure, not only for himself but for the other 14 players as well. And Rohit Sharma has done that. That's why he has won five IPL trophies; that's where his winning ratio when he started playing all those international games has been fabulous. If you go by the stats and the trophies, he ticks all the boxes. But the most important thing is he has made that dressing room a very secure dressing room.
{{/usCountry}}"Look, there is nothing which has changed from 2019 to 2023. There were so many changes that happened in 2019 as compared to the least amount of changes that has happened in 2023. A good captain and leader give you security, which makes the dressing room secure, not only for himself but for the other 14 players as well. And Rohit Sharma has done that. That's why he has won five IPL trophies; that's where his winning ratio when he started playing all those international games has been fabulous. If you go by the stats and the trophies, he ticks all the boxes. But the most important thing is he has made that dressing room a very secure dressing room.
{{/usCountry}}"When the captain comes out and talks in his post-match presentation that he believes in his players and gives them longer runs, it makes you believe how much your captain is backing you. And that is the difference between Rohit Sharma as a leader, compared to some other captains that have captained previously for India," Gambhir said in a chat on Star Sports.
Gambhir was also all praise for Rohit's aggressive approach as a batter in this World Cup which has in fact played a pivotal role in India setting the tone early in the match and thus easing the pressure off the subsequent batters. The former India opener reckoned that given the starts Rohit has gotten throughout, he could have notched up a few more hundreds, but he stayed true to his strategy and had his focus on winning each match rather than going for batting records.
"He approached this strategy because that is what he wanted from this team and hence he wanted to set that example for them. And the team always follows the leader. In the past few World Cups, India have always talked about wanting to be aggressive, but midway through they lost their will. Rohit has however walked the talk. He isn't obsessed with stats. He could have scored 3-4 hundreds in this World Cup. It was very easy for him. 140 crore Indians don't want a century or a five-wicket haul. They want the World Cup and that is what Rohit believes in," he said.