India captain Rohit Sharma returns, after having rested for the ODI series against West Indies, and presently he would be leading the side for the forthcoming five-match T20I series, starting Friday. Ahead of the series, Rohit addressed a press conference on Thursday, where he said that as per him, India were not playing conservative cricket in the shortest format last year ahead of the World Cup.
“We haven’t gotten the result in the World Cup, that does not mean we were playing bad cricket. And I do not agree that we were playing conservative cricket, if you lose 1-2 matches in the World Cup, it seems like we did not take the chances. If you look at the games we have played before the World Cup, we won 80 per cent of those. I do not understand how can you win these many matches if you are conservative,” said Rohit.
“We lost the World Cup, but it can happen, but that does not happen we were not playing freely. Lately, it is not like we have completely changed something, we have just given players the freedom to express themselves. If you play freely, performances will come out. The people on the outside should maintain peace, the way we are playing cricket, there will be failures and the results might not go our way, but it is okay as we are trying something. It can happen that mistakes take place but that does not mean that the players are bad. With time, everyone has to change, we are changing, so people on the outside also need to change,” he added.