Rohit Sharma's India didn't win World Cup, but captain's blueprint is the way forward

The 10-team Cricket World Cup was 45 days long and entailed 48 matches. At times it felt boring, and unnecessarily long-drawn. But then there were moments of extreme high and unprecedented satisfaction. Ultimately, it ended with a defeat in the final for Team India, but its culmination has somewhere left us all wanting a bit more, even Indian fans. Because, before it all unravelled in the final, Team India’s march to the final was not only unprecedented — with 10 wins from 10 matches — it was dominant and ruthless. A brand of cricket that we all had yearned for years to see from the best-paid cricketers in the world. World Cup 2023:  News  |  Schedule  |  Results  |  Points table And the credit for that transformation squarely goes to captain Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid. After all, no one changed as much as Rohit did to bring in the change into Team India’s mindset and playing style. In the 2019 ODI World Cup, Rohit was the highest run-getter with 648 from nine matches and five hundreds. But he had sensed it well that his style of accumulating runs and India’s overall approach of safety-first wasn’t going to be enough to win titles. It was at the same time when England had become the ODI champions on the back of their take-no-prisoners approach.

It wasn’t the greatest of the observations as the game has changed so much in the modern day. Even defending a 400+ target is a steep task at times. The approach which for a long time was to accumulate runs in middle overs and only go big in powerplays has gone under a radical change. Teams don’t wait for the end. It’s a full-blooded onslaught from the start. Be aggressive and get rewarded — this in many ways are the basics of modern-day game. There’s no room for compromise and teams that have abided by this principle have been the world champions. Rohit harboured the same dream. “I only see the World Cup. If I get one or two hundred or don’t get any, but I want to win the World Cup. That is the main goal,” he had said ahead of the 2023 World Cup. To get to the pinnacle, India adopted the policy to be aggressive from the word go once Rohit took over the captaincy reins in 2021 December and in real terms in 2023. With the T20 World Cup last year, the focus largely was on the shortest format and as we got into the new year, Rohit shifted gears. Attack and attack From safety first, in the first 10 overs, Rohit became a six-hitting machine. In 2023, he has smashed 47 sixes in the opening powerplay — the most for a batter in ODIs. He has scored 797 runs at a strike rate of 119 — again the most. He dominated those stats in the World Cup as well with 401 runs and 24 sixes. His strike rate went to 135 in the opening powerplay. In 2021, Rohit had a strike rate of 86.53. It jumped to 114.22 and 117.07 in 2022 and 2023 respectively. The funda was clear: He wanted to lead from the front to bring in the change. And it rubbed off on his teammates. Two of the top-six team totals in the World Cup belonged to India and they had three 350+ scores. The Men in Blue scored the most powerplay runs in the tournament at a better strike rate than any other team.

His walk says the story of India in World Cup Final 2023 :(#INDvAUS #Worldcupfinal2023 #WorldCup pic.twitter.com/aGag6eF5DX

— Ishan Joshi (@ishanjoshii) November 19, 2023

What it meant was a 10-game winning streak — India’s best performance stats-wise in a World Cup. Most importantly, all of those 10 wins were one-sided victories in which India were dominant and fearless in ways never seen before. They weren’t the team that waited for things to happen. They became a side without any inhibitions and wanted to take the initiative. And that’s Rohit, the captain’s, legacy from the World Cup. Calm amid chaos If there’s anything else, it’s how he took the team together with himself. Five titles with Mumbai Indians as a captain in the Indian Premier League, while leading some of the legends in the game, Rohit has shown that he has a maturity of another level. A level-headed and grounded captain and player, the 36-year-old used the same skills to bring peace into the dressing room and build trust, allowing the players to be expressive. He is not known for having any issues with any of his teammates and is hugely popular among the youngsters. One of the masterstrokes of Rohit and Dravid was to bring in mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton for the T20 World Cup last year, who helped star batter Virat Kohli make the transition back from a captain to player and allowed him to rediscover his scoring touch. It’s unfortunate that despite the changes India weren’t able to break the ICC title drought, but the new approach has potential and promise. As far as Rohit is concerned, he is 36 and where he goes from the final defeat is unclear, but it’s clear that India need to carry on the aggressive approach.