Indian captain Rohit Sharma | Source: X.com
The Indian cricket team will play its second World Cup final in eight months, facing South Africa in Barbados during the T20 World Cup 2024 final on Saturday.
India, which lost to Australia in the 2023 Cricket World Cup final on November 19 despite an unbeaten run, now has another opportunity to claim an ICC title against the Proteas in the 2024 T20 World Cup final.
Meanwhile, ahead of the high-stakes clash, former India captain Sourav Ganguly humorously remarked that Rohit might jump into the Barbados ocean if India loses the upcoming final.
“I don’t think he can lose two World Cup finals in seven (six) months. He will probably jump into the Barbados ocean if he loses two finals under his captaincy in seven months,” Ganguly told PTI.
“He has played two World Cup finals where he has gone into the final unbeaten. That speaks of his captaincy and leadership quality and I’m not surprised because he became captain when I was the BCCI president and when Virat didn’t want to captain India anymore,” said Ganguly as quoted by PTI.
“It took a lot of time to make him captain because he was not ready to captain. It took a lot of pushing from all of us to make him captain and I’m very happy to see the progress of Indian cricket under him.” Ganguly added.
Rohit Sharma, a five-time IPL champion with Mumbai Indians, has the experience that Ganguly believes will benefit him, as the longer duration of the IPL makes it harder to win compared to ICC tournaments like the T20 World Cup.
“Rohit has the record of winning five IPL titles, which is a huge achievement. Winning an IPL sometimes is more difficult. Don’t misquote me, I’m not saying IPL is better than international cricket,” said Ganguly.
“But you have to win 16-17 (12-13) matches to win an IPL; here you need to win 8-9 matches to win a World Cup. The honour is more in winning the World Cup, and I hope Rohit does it tomorrow,” Ganguly concluded.
