New Delhi:
Rohit Sharma had a fabulous series against South Africa when he was chosen to open the batting for the Indian cricket team. In Vizag, he smashed 176 and 127 to become the sixth Indian to score a century in both innings. In Ranchi, he hammered his maiden double ton and his tally of 529 runs won him the Man of the Series and Man of the Match awards. Rohit's efforts helped him advance 12 places to 10th position in the ICC Test Player Rankings. This put him in a unique list of Indian players for this achievement.
According to the latest ICC rankings, Rohit is now in the top 10 list of batsmen in all three formats. Rohit held a career-high ranking of second in ODIs (in February 2018) and seventh in T20Is (November 2018). Rohit is the third Indian after Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir to be in the top 10 in all three formats of the game. Kohli has been number one in all three formats while Gambhir was at the top in Tests and T20Is while his best ranking was eighth in ODIs.
Speaking after receiving both the Man of the Match and the Man of the Series Awards, Rohit said he wanted to capitalise on this opportunity. "It's been a great start, so I don't want to let it go. That started long back in 2013, when I started opening for India in white ball cricket. I realised you need to have discipline at the start of the innings. Once you are in, you can play your game. That's what I have done, I follow a certain template that allows me to have some success," Rohit said.
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Rohit added that he needed to maintain discipline and that support from the team management and the skipper played a vital part in his confidence. "You need support from the management, coach, captain, that has helped a lot. Test cricket is a different ball game, getting that big score will give me confidence moving forward. I was trying to be mindful about that. You need to be disciplined, I kept talking to myself," Rohit said.
