'We are playing our hearts out'

Rohit Sharma firmly believes his team's 'time will come' to win an ICC trophy, a milestone that has eluded Indian cricket for the past decade.

Rohit, known for his aggressive style of stroke-making, also spoke about his approach to captaincy.

'I wanted to bring about certain change, players going out there and playing with a lot of freedom. I wanted to take the statistical side of cricket out of this team,' Rohit told JioCinema on the sidelines of the opening Test against England in Hyderabad.

'Numbers are over=rated. In India, we do talk a lot about numbers and all of that. I got five hundreds in the 2019 World Cup, but we still lost. The hundreds don't matter.

'I may think about them maybe 20 years later after I retire, but what did we get? I wanted the trophy.

'If you don't win trophies, I don't think those 5-6 hundreds make too much sense. Team sport is all about winning trophies, not about individual accomplishments,' he added.

The World Cup 2023 final loss to Australia saw India's quest for an ICC title stretch to 10 years with their last victory dating back to the Champions Trophy in 2013.

After being runners-up in the T20I World Cup in 2014, the team faced semi-final exits in the 2015 ODI World Cup, the 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2019 ODI World Cup.

The agony continued with defeats in the finals of the 2017 Champions Trophy along with a semi-final loss in the 2022 T20 World Cup.

India also lost the finals of the first two World Test Championship cycles.

'The last three years have been great. Except winning the finals of ICC trophies, we have won everything,' Rohit insisted.

'That's one thing we've not been able to accomplish, but I think time will come. All we need to do is stay in a good mindset, not worry too much about the past, because you can't change the past.

'What you can change is what is going to come next, so all of us are quite focussed on that. We are playing our hearts out.'