Rohit Sharma says top-4 batters must take onus to score big runs in Champions Trophy

Indian captain Rohit Sharma feels the top-four batters need to put their hand up and score big runs in the Champions Trophy. Sharma recalled that they had done the same in the 2023 ODI World Cup and thus had made it to the final of the tournament.

Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer are in fine form as they recently scored 259 and 181 runs respectively in three ODIs against England. While Rohit Sharma scored an impressive knock of 119 runs off just 90 balls in the second ODI at Cuttack, Kohli scored a decent knock of 52 runs at Ahmedabad.

Rohit wants the team to come up with a collective batting effort and post scores in excess of 320 to get the desired results.

Rohit Sharma said in the presser on Wednesday, “Your top-three, four, five batters need to get that big score for you to post a big score eventually. So, I think our top-four batters are quite experienced. And we know that once they are set, they like to get those big runs. We’ve seen it as well when we played that ODI World Cup (in 2023), there were only a few hundreds that we scored, but we went on to score quite a few times, 350-plus scores, or 330 scores like that.”

“That will be our focus. We will not be looking at the individual milestones and stuff like that. Whoever the two batters are in there; they have to do the job. And the guy who goes in after that has a job to do as well. So, if seven, eight of us think like that, we will end up getting the score that we are looking for. It’s just about everyone contributing to the cause,” the 37-year-old added.

Meanwhile, Mohammed Shami recently made a comeback after a long hiatus and Rohit observed that it was crucial for them that the veteran seamer got back into action.

“All we wanted with Shami was to get him back to wearing that India colors more than anything else. Whether he gets wickets or not that was completely immaterial for us at that point. We wanted him to get back to playing for India. And he’s done that.”

“When you talk about a bowler like Shami who’s done the job over the years so many times for us, it’s just about getting back to their rhythm and hopefully he can find some rhythm early on in this tournament and help the team,” the Indian captain added.

India will begin their Champions Trophy campaign against Bangladesh in Dubai on February 20.