Mumbai: India captain Rohit Sharma on Tuesday asked the squad for focusing on the upcoming T20I series against the West Indies.
He said stressing that the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction will have no bearing on the players’ minds when they step out on the field at the Eden Gardens.
Quitte a few players from the T20I squad found takers at the IPL 2022 mega auction on Saturday and Sunday in Bengaluru. While Ishan Kishan (Rs 15.25 crore to Mumbai Indians) and Deepak Chahar (Rs 14 crore to Chennai Super Kings), Harshal Patel and Shardul Thakur, earned big pay cheques, others, including Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Shreyas Iyer, Deepak Hooda found new franchise ahead of the 10-team season.
Rohit Sharma, speaking to the press on the eve of the 1st T20I against the West Indies in Kolkata, said it’s natural that players would have felt up and down with emotions running high during the auction but stressed that all of them are professionals and focus on the job in hand in the T20I series.
“It was understood that guys will go through ups and downs, some emotional feeling within themselves on which team they will play for in the IPL. But that was done the day before yesterday, we had a great meeting with everyone and we asked them to focus on the colour blue for the next two week,” Rohit said.
“Whatever has happened, has happened, for the next two weeks, they have to focus on playing for India, nothing else,” he added.
“That is something we spoke of and all these guys are professionals, you can expect once they wear India colours, it is all about India, nothing else matters.”
“There is no consideration of IPL here, honestly. We are not looking at where will players bat for their franchise in the IPL, we are looking at where they will bat for Team India, as simple as that. We will be focusing on this, these guys do different roles for their franchises, what we need from them here is important. IPL will happen later, we will take care of it then.
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