Rohit dedicated his post to India’s next generation of superstars, who took the series by storm, while taking a cheeky dig at himself.
India captain Rohit Sharma dropped another classic on Instagram, hours after the home team scripted a spectacular series win against England at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala. Rohit dedicated his post to India’s next generation of superstars, who took the series by storm, not allowing the hosts to miss the likes of Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, among other senior Test regulars, while taking a cheeky dig at himself.
Rohit Sharma with India’s next generation of superstars
Kohli missed the India Test series owing to the birth of his second child while Mohammed Shami underwent an ankle surgery. Rahul was sidelined after the first Test. Ravindra Jadeja missed the second Test. Jasprit Bumrah was rested for the fourth match and Ravichandran Ashwin missed a day of action during the third game for personal reasons.
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As many as five players – Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep and Devdutt Padikkal made their debut through the course of the series with Rohit leading a gang of young India batters which includes the likes of Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal, who only made his debut last year. Yet, India out-batted England in every innings in the series, en route to a 4-1 win in the five-match contest.
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Hailing the sensational show from the young players, Rohit took to Instagram to share a photo with them and captioned it: “Garden mein ghoomne wale bande.” The picture featured Jurel, Jaiswal, Gill and Sarfaraz.
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A post shared by Rohit Sharma (@rohitsharma45)
For those unversed, the dig bat himself refers to a certain stump mic reaction from Rohit, earlier during the series, that had gone viral on social media, where he spoke on similar lines to warn the players to stay alert while fielding after he was left disappointed with the efforts from the youngsters during the second Test in Vizag.
Speaking to Jio Cinema after the win by an innings and 64 runs in the fifth Test, Rohit revealed how the Indian management gave a sense of assurance to all the debutants, thus making them feel relaxed about their position in the team through the course of the series.
“All of these guys are extremely talented. All they needed was a little bit of assurance and a platform. We didn’t want to keep putting pressure on them. We wanted to make sure our job at the start of the series was to give them the comfort, and assurance that they’re going to play all five Test matches. Because we may not accept it, but it is the fact that it plays in everyone’s mind, ‘Okay, if I don’t get it right in a couple of Test matches, I may get dropped’. The insecurity always creeps in,” said the India captain.
“The first thing we wanted to do was to make sure that they’re given the freedom and comfort to go and express themselves. We’ve seen the talent; there is no hiding from that. It is just, for us, about to make sure we lay a nice red carpet for them to go out and perform,” Rohit added.
