Rohit Sharma never shies away from having fun at press conferences and the Indian captain couldn’t help but do the same once again on Thursday (May 2).
Even the press conference for team selection for the T20 World Cup couldn’t stop the Indian captain from sharing a joyful moment with reporters. India’s 15-member squad for the much-awaited ICC T20 World Cup 2024 was announced on Tuesday (April 30). Two days after the squad announcement, Rohit Sharma and chief selector Ajit Agarkar interacted with the media.
During the interaction, they were asked about the team mix, the decision to include certain players and the decision to leave out some notable names like KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Rinku Singh. Coming to the incident involving Rohit Sharma, the India captain had a hilarious reaction when a journalist asked him about the absence of a frontline player in the team.
The selectors have picked two players from the 15-member squad – Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel are the other spin options in the team. As soon as the journalist asked the question, Rohit Sharma raised his hand to point out that he himself was not a spinner. Rohit Sharma’s reaction left journalists and Agarkar divided.
Look:
pic.twitter.com/IlBnv4sDM6
– Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka (@Hanji_CricDekho) May 2, 2024
Rohit Sharma on India’s indirect attack:
During the press conference, Rohit Sharma stated that he wanted four spinners in the squad although he did not reveal the reason for his decision. The Indian team management and selectors faced criticism for picking only three frontline pacers in the team, but Rohit made it clear that he preferred to have more spinners.
“I don’t want to go into too much detail, I’m sure the rival captains are listening to this,” Rohit said.
“I definitely wanted four spinners. We’ve played a lot of cricket there. [Caribbean]. We know what the conditions are like. Since the morning starts between 10 and 10:30, there is a bit of a technical aspect involved in this.”
“The reason for having four spinners is this, which I am not going to say in public. But I wanted four spinners for sure. With two of the spinners being all-rounders who can bat, Axar and Jadeja, and two attacking spinners, Kuldeep and Chahal: It gives you balance in the spin department, depending on the composition of the rival team we can decide what we want to play with,” he added.