‘No PR or marketing will get you that’: Gambhir’s ‘selfless captain’ take on Rohit sparks ‘Kohli targeted’ talk
India captain Rohit Sharma has been one of the most consistent batters in 2023 World Cup and one of the most pivotal players behind the team’s unbeaten run in the tournament so far. On Sunday, carrying his sublime form, he revived India from the early blow of three quick wickets, which included Virat Kohli’s dismissal for duck , to score his third half-century in this tournament against England. Impressed with Rohit’s consistency, former India batter Gautam Gambhir hailed the captain as a “selfless” cricketer and for leading the team by example. However, a section of Indian cricket fans felt that the words were indirectly “targeted” towards Kohli. (India vs England Live Score Cricket World Cup 2023)
Gautam Gambhir has his say on Rohit Sharma’s batting in World Cup 2023
Speaking on air during India’s sixth league game, against the defending champions in Lucknow, Gambhir reckoned that had records and numbers been Rohit’s top priority, he would have had 40 or more centuries in ODI cricket. Praising the India captain as a “selfless” leader, the 2011 World Cup-winning player said that Rohit has shown as a skipper what he truly wants from his batter, even though the numbers may not exactly reflect the same.
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“Rohit Sharma would have got 40-45 hundreds by now, but he is not obsessed with hundreds. Only a selfless leader does it first what he wants from the team. If you want a positive batting mindset from the team, the you got to do it first. That is called leading from the front. No amount of PR or marketing would get you that. You have to do it yourself and that is what Rohit Sharma has done in this World Cup. His average may not say that or his run tally might place him in the 5th or the 10th spot, but that doesn’t matter. But if you want to lift that trophy on November 19, that is should be your aim. Now you have to decide whether you want to score a hundred or win the World Cup,” he said.
The comment did not go down well with fans of Kohli as they felt that Gambhir had indirectly targeted the former India captain in the wake of a social media outrage post India’s World Cup game against Bangladesh in Pune last week where the India No. 3 was blasted for “selfishly” going for a century, which would have put him at par with Sachin Tendulkar’s prized tally of 49 hundreds in ODIs, before being dismissed for 95.
A win for India on Sunday could virtyallu guarantee them a spot in the semifinals for the second consecutive time in World Cups and subsequently it could officially mark the end of England’s disappointing outing in the 2023 edition of the tournament.
