The Indian captain Rohit Sharma has expressed strong disagreement to the common narrative that is going on in cricketing world these days about the future of One Day International (ODI) cricket. After the England test captain Ben Stokes retired from ODI cricket a few weeks ago and some of England’s current and ex-players raised concerns about the future of ODI cricket, a debate started around that.
Rohit Sharma was addressing the media in Mumbai yesterday and when he was asked if he agrees to the concerns that have been raised about the future of ODI cricket, the Indian skipper straightaway called all those talks “rubbish”.
According to Rohit, an individual player can decide what format he has to play and what not, but that doesn’t mean any format is in danger. Whenever India plays an ODI game at home, the stadiums are full and people turn up in huge numbers because they still want to see ODI cricket.
Rohit Sharma said, "I'd never say that ODIs are getting finished or T20 is getting finished or Tests are nearing an end. For me cricket is important, be at any format. I made my name through ODI cricket, so these talks are nonsense".
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) August 18, 2022
People were concerned about test cricket sometime back, now they are concerned about ODI cricket: Rohit Sharma
Rohit Sharma recalled that it’s not a long time back when people were talking about the future of test cricket and they were concerned about that. Now, they are concerned about the future of ODI cricket. Rohit said that in his opinion, no format is in danger and if it’s up to him, he would want a fourth format to be there because he just enjoys playing cricket, whichever format it might be.
Rohit Sharma : "Mera naam hi One-day cricket se bana hai. Sab bekar ki baatein hai. I would never say that ODI/T20/Tests are nearing an end. I wish there is another format as well, because for me, playing the game is most important. I love all three formats."
— Dr. Cric Point 🏏 (@drcricpoint) August 17, 2022
- Interestingly, the new future tour programme (FTP) released by the ICC has also not cut down on the no. of ODI games massively for the next cycle, despite all the talks of the popularity of ODIs going down. Most of the full members and associate nations will be playing almost the same no. of ODIs that they were playing in the last FTP.
