India’s ODI skipper Rohit Sharma said that the Sri Lanka series will be no testing ground for the Champions trophy. The team’s ultimate focus will be to beat Sri Lanka first and foremost. This three-match series against Sri Lanka is still top-flight international cricket and India will well and truly treat it the same as any other big game.
Though it may be tempting to view it mainly as a chance to try new things, India believes the series has enough value to win on its own. Rohit’s competitive nature is so ingrained that, despite his retirement from Twenty20 internationals and his ineligibility for selection in the recently concluded series, he still firmly believes that he is a Twenty20 international player.
Sri Lanka is not a top-ranked ODI team, and in addition, their performances have been rather poor in the past few years. They were placed at the ninth spot in the 50-over World Cup last year and failed to make it to the Champions trophy as well.
“You get asked a lot whether this series is a preparation for the World Cup, or is this a preparation for the Champions Trophy,” Rohit said. “It’s not a practice ground – it’ still an international game. We will keep in our minds what we want to achieve, but this is by no means preparation or practice or anything like that. We want to come here and play good cricket and get something out of the series.
“Of course we want to try everything possible, but when you’re representing the nation the quality of cricket should remain the way it is, and how we’ve played over the last few years. That is more important, rather than thinking about it as a preparation and saying let’s go out and chill in Colombo. We don’t think like that.
“When we play a series and when we play a game, we want to get something out of that. We might tell a bowler: ‘We want something different from you.’ We might tell a batter: ‘This is how we want you to play in the middle overs.’ We want to get something out of the series, but not at the cost of going out there and having no intent or purpose. For me the standard of Indian cricket is more important.”
The ODI series begins tomorrow (2nd August) followed by games on 4th August and 7th August. All the games will be played at the R Premadasa stadium in Colombo.
