'Rohit Will Give You Energy, Confidence'

'Dhoni will never go to a player and ask him what field you want.'
'He will want the player to learn from his own mistakes.'
'Rohit will put his arm around your shoulder and tell you, "This is what is expected from you, you can do this".'

The captaincy style of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rohit Sharma are completely different and both have their own style of motivating the players on the field, said former India spinner Harbhajan Singh.

Comparing Dhoni and Rohit's leadership styles, Bhajji stated: 'Dhoni and Rohit are completely different captains. Dhoni will never go to a player and ask him what field you want. He will want the player to learn from his own mistakes.'

'Rohit the captain will go and talk to each player. He is someone who will put his arm around your shoulder and tell you, "This is what is expected from you, you can do this." He will give you the energy and confidence,' Bhajji revealed on the podcast Find a Way with Taruwar Kohli with former Under-19 player Taruwar Kohli.

Bhajji shone light on Dhoni's style of captaincy when he played under him at the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL.

'Dhoni was keeping and I was fielding at short fine leg. Shardul Thakur came in to bowl and Kane Williamson hit the first ball over the top for a boundary and next ball again he hit another four.'

'I went up to Dhoni and told him, "Just ask Shardul to try this", but he replied: "Paaji, if I tell him today, then he will never learn. Let him learn by himself. His thought process was Shardul will only learn if he gets hit for boundaries. So that was Dhoni's way of captaincy."

Harbhajan, who played for both CSK and Mumbai Indians, believes that Test leadership brought about a lot of changes in Rohit's captaincy.

'He has been leading Mumbai Indians for 12-13 years, he has led India for a while now so that experience counts a lot. The biggest change in Rohit's captaincy came in the last 2-3 years when he started captaining in Test cricket. When you captain in Test cricket, you learn a lot.

'In T20 cricket, there are many moments which go unnoticed but in Test cricket the captain has to look after everything. His tactics, his game plan, his executions are very important to win a Test match. It makes you an excellent leader.'

Steve Waugh was outstanding as a Test captain. If you are a good captain in Test cricket, then you will also become good leaders in T20s and ODI cricket as well.'

Harbhajan was part of India's T20 World Cup winning team in 2007 but he believes that the Rohit-led Indian team which won the World Cup this year was much better.

Back then, during the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007, India's players couldn't fully understand T20 cricket, which was a new format at that time.

'This 2024 T20 World Cup winning team had more match winners than our team (2007 T20 World Cup). That time the format was very new for us. We were playing (T20 cricket) for the first time. We hadn't played much of the format so we didn't understand it that well. But we managed to get into a flow and we kept on winning.'

'In 2007, we didn't had any popular names. We had Yuvi (Yuvraj Singh), Viru (Virender Sehwag), myself and Ajit (Agarkar), but the rest of them were new guys and Dhoni was captaining for the first time.'

'This time you had, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya... all of them are big match-winners. Then you have Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant and Axar Patel.

'You see Axar's contribution in the final, people don't talk about it. Arshdeep Singh and Jasprit Bumrah were unbelievable, they were all big match winners, they played outstandingly well throughout the tournament.

'Look at Rohit Sharma, how well he played against Australia, he set the momentum.'