June 29, 2024 will be a date etched in the history of Indian cricket as the Men in Blue won the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 in Barbados. However, just when the party had started, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, two icons of Indian cricket, announced their retirement.
Life came full circle for Rohit Sharma when he began his international career with the victory at the 2007 T20 World Cup. Back then, he was one of the youngest members of the Indian team that won the trophy under MS Dhoni in Johannesburg. However, in Barbados, he was the captain of the Indian team that entered the history books forever.
India have been challenging for an ICC title for 11 years now. The 2013 ICC Champions Trophy was the last trophy that the Men in Blue had won when it came to ICC tournaments. In their bid, they handed over the reins of the Indian team to Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who succeeded MS Dhoni as captains in ICC tournaments.
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Virat Kohli couldn’t do it for the Men in Blue when he came close but always lacked to win the final frontier. Then, the BCCI decided to bring in Rohit Sharma as the captain of the Indian team in all 3 formats after the ICC T20 World Cup 2021.
The first ICC tournament in which Rohit captained India was the 2022 ICC T20 World Cup and that was when India decided they needed to approach limited overs cricket in a different way.
Rohit Sharma: the man of his words
After the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia, Rohit affirmed his willingness to adopt an aggressive style of play in limited-overs cricket for Team India. The first glimpse of this was seen in the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup, where Rohit led by example.
In every game of the tournament, Rohit ensured that India got off to a flying start and set the tone for the other batsmen to follow. However, the Indian captain’s tryst with destiny was to be prolonged when Australia put a damper on India’s perfect World Cup campaign in Ahmedabad on the evening of November 19, 2023.
BCCI Secretary Jay Shah has cleared the air after the 2023 ODI World Cup that Team India will play the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup under the leadership of Rohit Sharma and coaching of Rahul Dravid.
There has been a lot of speculation about how Rohit and Virat Kohli will fare in this T20 World Cup given their IPL form and the challenging batting conditions in the US and West Indies.
However, Rohit Sharma activated the World Cup mode in him and did exactly what he had promised to the Indian fans after the 2022 defeat. In the final, it was Virat Kohli who scored his best knock of the tournament as the team India flew from the West Indies with the ICC T20 World Cup trophy in their luggage.
Virat Kohli and Rohit announce their retirement
The entire country was elated and celebrating when Virat Kohli appeared at the post-match presentation and announced that he had retired from T20Is and would allow the younger generation of Indian players to take the team to greater heights from here.
Even before he could feel the happiness of winning the T20 World Cup, Indian captain Rohit Sharma appeared in the post-match press conference and also announced his retirement from the T20I format.
“This was my last T20 World Cup, this is exactly what we wanted to achieve. One day you feel like you can’t run and this happens, God is great. Just the occasion, now or never situation. This was my last T20 match playing for India. “We wanted to lift that cup,” Virat Kohli said at the post-match presentation.
“I wanted to. Yes, I did, this was an open secret. It’s not something I wasn’t going to announce even if we had lost. It’s time for the next generation to take the T20 game forward and do wonders like we have seen them do in IPL, I have no doubt they will keep the flag flying high and take this team further now,” Kohli added.
“This was my last match as well,” the captain said in his post-match press conference, referring to Virat Kohli’s earlier announcement that he will retire from T20Is.
“I enjoyed this format from the moment I started playing. It’s a better time to say goodbye to this format. I enjoyed every moment of this
“This is what I wanted: I wanted to win the cup,” he said, greeting the audience to applause from the media.
