The studies of a rift between two India stalwarts, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, grabbed most eyeballs when Ravi Shastri was related to the Men in Blue as head coach.
Back then, Shastri had dismissed all such speculations made by the media, however now former India fielding coach R Sridhar has revealed a distinct facet of the Virat versus Rohit saga.
In his e book, ‘Coaching Beyond: My Days with the Indian Cricket Team’, Sridhar narrated that day when Shastri referred to as Virat and Rohit to his room throughout the 2019 India tour of the West Indies.
“After the 2019 World Cup, there was a lot of bad press about what allegedly happened in the dressing room during our campaign and following our loss to New Zealand in the semifinal. We were informed that there was a Rohit camp and a Virat camp, that someone had unfollowed another on social media – stuff that could be unsettling if you allowed it to fester,” Sridhar wrote in his e book.
“We landed in the United States (US) some 10 days after the World Cup for a T20 collection in opposition to West Indies in Lauderhill. One of the first issues Ravi did on arrival was to name Virat and Rohit to his room and impress upon them that for Indian cricket to be wholesome, they wanted to be on the similar web page. ‘Whatever happened on social media, that’s all high quality, however you two are the most senior cricketers so this should cease,’ Ravi stated in his typical non-nonsense method. ‘I want you to put all this behind and get together for us to move forward’”.
Thus, Shastri became the peacemaker while Virat and Rohit set their reset button. Since then, the rapport between the top two Indian stars has improved significantly.
“You could see that things started to get better after that. Ravi’s motion was swift, easy and decisive. It was simply getting each the guys collectively, sitting them down and making them speak. Ravi didn’t waste any time in doing so. That he felt inspired to name the white-ball captain and his deputy to obviously state his thoughts is indicative of the type of environment we had facilitated. That Virat and Rohit noticed purpose in Ravi’s stance and instantly obtained all the way down to enterprise was the mutilate tribute to our tradition ‘one for all, all for one, but team above all’,” said Sridhar.