India’s captain Rohit Sharma stresses the need for a top-four batter to score big in every game for India’s success in the 2025 Champions Trophy. He recalled their 2023 World Cup run, where few centuries were scored, but the team posted strong totals.
India begins their campaign against Bangladesh in Dubai on February 20 after a 3-0 series win over England, where Shubman Gill shined with 259 runs. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Shreyas Iyer also made significant contributions with the bat.
Interestingly, India will retain the same top four from their 2023 ODI World Cup squad, where they finished as runners-up. Before the Bangladesh match, Rohit said the team plans to follow the same successful batting strategy from the World Cup (via Cricbuzz):
“Your top-three, four, five batters need to get that big score for you to post a big score eventually. So, I think our top-four batters are quite experienced. And we know that once they are set, they like to get those big runs.”
“We’ve seen it as well when we played that ODI World Cup (in 2023), there were only a few hundreds that we scored, but we went on to score quite a few times, 350-plus scores, or 330 scores like that.”
“That will be our focus. We will not be looking at the individual milestones and stuff like that. Whoever the two batters are in there; they have to do the job. And the guy who goes in after that has a job to do as well. So, if seven, eight of us think like that, we will end up getting the score that we are looking for. It’s just about everyone contributing to the cause,” the 37-year-old added.
“We Wanted Him Back in Team India”- Rohit Sharma on Shami’s Comeback
Mohammed Shami made his long-awaited return to international cricket in the white-ball series against England after recovering from a heel injury sustained post the 2023 World Cup. Though he appeared a bit rusty, Rohit Sharma was pleased with his comeback. He said:
“All we wanted with Shami was to get him back to wearing that India colors more than anything else. Whether he gets wickets or not that was completely immaterial for us at that point. We wanted him to get back to playing for India. And he’s done that.”
“When you talk about a bowler like Shami who’s done the job over the years so many times for us, it’s just about getting back to their rhythm and hopefully he can find some rhythm early on in this tournament and help the team,” the Indian captain added.
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