Australian legend Ricky Ponting believes a “laid-back”
Rohit Sharma is the ideal captain to lead Bharat to their third ODI World Cup
title, the second on home soil after the 2011 triumph.
With three convincing wins under their belt, Bharat have
made a perfect start to their World Cup campaign. Bharat defeated Australia by
six wickets in their tournament opener, before registering emphatic eight and
seven-wicket wins over Afghanistan and Pakistan to sit on top of the points
table.
“He’s very laid back, Rohit. Very laid back with
everything he does. You can even see that by the way that he plays. He’s a
pretty laconic sort of batsman as well, and that’s the way he is both on and
off the field,” Ponting told the ICC.
Rohit took the captaincy reins from Virat Kohli in
both the white-ball formats in December 2021.
And Ponting believes Rohit’s character fits perfectly
for the India job, allowing Kohli to focus on his batting.
“Someone like Virat, who is a bit more
heart-on-the-sleeve, and probably listens to the fans and plays up with the
fans a little bit more, someone with his personality would probably find it a
bit harder,” said the two-time World Cup winning Australia skipper.
“But I think Rohit will be fine with it. He’s a
terrific bloke and has been a great player for a long time, and he’s done a
great job as leader of India,” he continued.
The Men In Blue last won the World Cup when the
tournament was jointly hosted by Bharat, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 2011.
So, the extra pressure of performing in front of home
fans would definitely be there, but Ponting feels Rohit is the best man to deal
with that.
“We can’t sit back and say that the pressure won’t get
to them (India) at some stage, or it won’t affect them, because it will, just
with the enormity of the tournament.
“But he’ll (Rohit) take it and cope with it as well as
probably anyone,” he said.
Ponting said with all bases covered, India are the
team to beat in the ongoing showpiece.
“I said from the start that I think they’re going to
be the team to beat. They’ve got a very talented team,” he said.
“They’ve got all bases covered with their fast
bowling, their spin and their top-order, middle-order batting. They’re going to
be extremely hard to beat. But we’ll see how they hold up under extreme
pressure as well,” Ponting concluded.
Bharat will next play Bangladesh in Pune on Thursday.
PTI
