Was determined not to throw away my wicket: Rohit

Mohali: India skipper Rohit Sharma says he was determined not to throw his wicket away, a day after an end-stage manic acceleration saw him smash a record third double ton in One-day Internationals. The skipper spoke to head coach Ravi Shastri after India levelled the three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka with a 141-run win in the second game here.

“I kept telling myself unless I make a mistake I am not going to get out. I want them to get me out, I don’t want to throw away my wicket, so that is something that I kept telling and I was quite determined to bat as long as possible,” Rohit told Shastri during a video chat, which was uploaded by the BCCI’s official website.

Opening the innings, Rohit scored 208 to guide India to a mammoth 392 for four at the PCA Stadium yesterday. “I knew the wicket was superb and the outfield here is lightning fast, so I kept telling myself I just need to hold the position, and hit the line. That’s all I did.

“We knew that the conditions were a little challenging at the start of the innings. And me and Shikhar (Dhawan) knew once we play out those initial overs then batting will get easier and exactly that happened. I just went through my routine and the partnership was always important.”

The left-right opening combination compounded Sri Lanka’s woes. “We kept rotating the strike, which was very important, and we never allowed the bowler to bowl six balls at one batsman, we wanted to change and the left-right combination always helps.”

Among the three double centuries, Rohit struggled to pick his most cherished. “It’s so difficult to pick one because all three like I was saying in the post-match presentation, it’s so difficult to pick one of these three because all three have come at crucial junctions of the game and at a crucial time, different scenarios of the game.

“Against Australia, it was the series-decider and the 264, which I got against Sri Lanka again, that was after three months of layoff – I had a finger injury, I was nervous whether I would be able to score runs or not, so all those things were going in my mind.

“And this one again, having had a loss in the first game we wanted to come back as a batting unit really hard.” Rohit credited the Indian team’s strength and conditioning coach Shankar Basu’s role. “Thanks to our trainer Basu he has been training really hard with all of us and my strength is timing the ball. I was just looking to time the ball, get in the line of the ball.

“I know I am not someone like MS Dhoni and Chris Gayle, these kinds of players, I don’t have so much power, but I rely a lot on timing and that’s exactly what I did.”