Ahead of his side’s ICC T20 World Cup opening match against Ireland, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma reflected on his bond with head coach Rahul Dravid, for who this tournament will be last as the head coach.

India, the inaugural T20 World Cup champions from 2007, will be kickstarting their campaign against Ireland in their group A clash. The Men in Blue will be hoping to win the whole thing and secure their first International Cricket Council (ICC) trophy since 2013’s ICC Champions Trophy win.
Ahead of the match in the pre-match press conference, Rohit said that his bond with Dravid goes way long back to when he was breaking into Team India in the late 2000s and he was his first captain.
“My equation with Rahul Dravid is very good. He is my first captain. I played under him, He is such a big role model for all of us. I have seen him play when I was just coming into the team. He has shown a lot of determination in his career, taken us out of difficult situations. I try to convince him to continue as a coach. I will not be able to see him go. It has been fruitful working with him, I enjoyed every bit of it,” he said.
On the pitch invasion that took place during the side’s warm-up match against Bangladesh where a fan approached to meet him but was caught by police, Rohit said that no one should be entering the ground.
“Players’ security is important. Even the security of fans is important. You have to respect the rules of a country,” he added.
On playing in almost alien conditions in the USA, Rohit said that conditions are unknown to all the teams and the team will be focusing on what it needs to do rather than their opponent.
“The conditions are quite unknown for a lot of teams. That is the same for all. You just have to play good cricket. We are not going to look into the opposition that we are playing. The important thing for us is what we are going to do with the bat, ball and field. You do look into their strengths, weakness and team composition, but that is it,” said Rohit.
On the slow surface of the Nassau County Stadium where India will be playing their campaign opener and where Sri Lanka and South Africa played a low-scoring match on Monday, Rohit said that he got to know how the pitch was playing through his teammates and the support staff.
“There is uncertainty about the pitches we will play on, the outfield. Maybe the pitch we play on would be a good one. It is about adapting quickly. We know what to do as a batting and bowling group on different surfaces. We will keep an eye on all these aspects and decide what is best combination for us, we have got seamers, spinners etc,” he added.
Rohit said that the Men in Blue is coming into the competition after a high-scoring Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 and are well aware that the same conditions and high-scoring games would not take place here.
“We have to be a little mindful and see what is the best we can do. We have a lot of experience with batters who play outside India. We hope they can apply themselves and use it to their advantage. We are coming off a heavy-scoring IPL, we will have to understand what is going to happen here. You will have to assess things as quickly as possible,” he added.
India Squad: Rohit Sharma(c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube
Ireland Squad: Paul Stirling(c), Andrew Balbirnie, Lorcan Tucker(w), Harry Tector, Curtis Campher, George Dockrell, Gareth Delany, Ross Adair, Barry McCarthy, Mark Adair, Joshua Little, Craig Young, Benjamin White, Neil Rock, Graham Hume. (ANI)