It’s been 20 days. 20 long days of getting over the feeling of what might have been. After being unbeaten for ten games in a row, and playing a brand of cricket that had the whole country rooting behind the team, Team India suffered a heartbreak at the hands of the Aussies. It wasn’t easy on anyone, least of all, our skipper, who gave it his all, Rohit Sharma.

“I had no idea how to come back from this,” Rohit said in an exclusive chat with @TeamRO45 on their Instagram handle. “First few days, I didn’t know what to do. You know…my family, my friends kept me going. They kept things pretty light around me, which was helpful. It wasn’t easy to digest, but life moves on. You have to move on in life. But honestly it was tough, it was not easy to move on.

“I have always grown up watching 50-over World Cups. To me that was the ultimate prize. We’ve worked all these years, you know, for that World Cup. And it is disappointing right, if you don’t get through it, don’t get what you want. What you’ve been looking at all this while, what you’ve been dreaming of. You get disappointed. You get frustrated at times as well. I thought we did everything we could from our side.” 

But scratch the surface of disappointment, and you’ll see the pride he has in his team and the 2023 World Cup campaign.  

“If I look on the other side of it, I am really proud of the team as well. Because how we played was simply outstanding. You don’t get to perform like that in every World Cup. And I am pretty sure at least, how we played up until that final, it would have given people a lot of joy, a lot of pride watching the team play,” he said.

What was equally heartwarming was the way the whole country took pride in this team. Even after the loss in the final, there was and still is a lot of appreciation for the Men in Blue. And that was a secret source of strength for Rohit.

“After that final, it was very hard to get back and start moving on. Which is why I decided that I needed to go somewhere and just get my mind out of this. But then, wherever I was, I realised that people were coming up to me and they were appreciating everyone’s effort, how well we played. Yeah… I mean, I feel for all of them. They all, along with us, were dreaming of lifting that World Cup. Everywhere we went during this entire campaign, there was so much support from everyone who came to the stadium firstly, and people who were watching it from home as well. I want to appreciate what people have done for us in that one and a half month period,” he quipped.

“For me to see people coming up to me, telling me that they were proud of the team, made me feel good to a certain extent. Along with them, I was healing as well. I felt that, okay, these are the kind of things you want to hear. People, when they understand what a player must be going through and when they know these kind of things, to not bring out that frustration, that anger, means a lot to us. For me, definitely, it meant a lot. Because there was no anger, it was just pure love from people that I met, and it was wonderful to see that.

“So it gives you that motivation to get back and start working again, and look for another ultimate prize.”