West Indies vs India, 1st T20 | We're never conservative, new approach in T20s will witness occasional failures: Rohit Sharma
The Hindu
Ahead of the first T20 against the West Indies, Rohit Sharma said the team for the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia is more or less settled with only a few spots up for grabs
Captain Rohit Sharma believes the new fearless approach adopted by India in the shortest format will result in occasional failures but disagrees that they were playing "conservative" cricket during last year's T20 World Cup in UAE.
Ahead of the first T20 against the West Indies, Rohit said the new approach provides more freedom to players, which has yielded success after the disappointing World Cup campaign, where India were eliminated in the league stage.
"We didn't get the result from the last World Cup but that doesn't mean we played bad cricket all these years and I don't agree we were playing conservative cricket," Rohit said ahead of the five-match T20 series against the West Indies which begins here on Friday.
"If you lose one or two matches in the World Cup, it feels like we were doing this and that, we were not taking our chances. It's not like that. If you look at the overall games that we have played leading into the World Cup, we won 80% of our games.
"If we were conservative, how can we win so many matches? That's fine that we lost in the World Cup, didn't qualify but that happens. That doesn't mean we are playing with fear, not playing openly.
"Lately, we haven't made any changes, we are doing the same things but the players have been given some freedom to go out and play their own game. Play openly, no need to take any undue pressure, if you play freely, performances will show."
Rohit said change is the only constant and the Indian team and its fans too have to move on with time.