Manchester: It’s always interesting to learn India’s star opener Rohit Sharma’s thinking process as he explained in detail about his approach to the game. After his first century against the Proteas, he had spoken in depth on his preparation for the game. Yesterday he discussed how he went about working on his game and his century against Pakistan. Sharma revealed that he attributed to the beautiful phase of life that he was going through.
Elaborating on that, he said: “I think it's just the space I am in right now. It's a very good phase in my life. My newly-born daughter has actually put me in a good space. So, I think I'm enjoying my cricket coming off a great IPL campaign and then starting off here. We always know how important it is to start well. So, the focus was always on that and then see where the team is heading to, as well as me the individual. So I think as a team we're heading in the right direction.”
When asked to pick the best among his 24 tons so far, he candidly admitted that he would not be able to do that. “I don't know. It's hard to put any knock on the top because all those knocks and 100s you play for your country are very, very important.”
He then jokingly said than he will be asked this question again if he gets his next hundred.
Sharma was twice asked about what went wrong with the Pakistan team. His response was: “Rather than talking about them, I would think we were really, really good today, both with the bat and the ball. Yes, we were under pressure when they were batting. They had a partnership there. But that is the skill of our spinners. Whenever the opposition had stringed long partnerships, these guys have come and gotten us those breakthroughs. So I can't really see what Pakistan did wrong.”
When a reporter asked what would he suggest to Pakistan batsmen to come out from their crisis, he said that if only he is the Pakistan coach, he would advise them and laughed.
Sharma seems to have noticed that Indians and Pakistanis were somewhat equal in number in the stands during the match. “I think the crowd was somewhere around 51 percent Indian, 49 percent Pakistan. Be it an Indian or Pakistan fan, he comes for some good entertainment, and probably we managed that as a team. We also wanted to get those two points, having washed out our previous game. So we were quite keen to get onto the park and display our skills, because of late we've been in good form. So we just wanted to continue and have a full game.”
The dashing opener wasn’t surprised about the atmosphere that India and Pakistan fans create. “Yeah, it was always going to be like that (in India-Pakistan game). We knew that.”
