Mumbai: Star India opener Rohit Sharma has said he never thought he would get a double hundred during the 2013 Bengaluru ODI against Australia.
It was Rohit’s first double hundred soon after he started opening the batting in the Champions Trophy. India’s current limited overs vice-captain Rohit is the only player to have scored three double centuries in ODIs.
I never thought I would score a double hundred. I just wanted to bat well. It was a nice and flat pitch, Rohit told senior India off-spinner R Ashwin during an Instagram Live chat.
Rohit scored 209 off 158 balls, his innings laced with 12 fours and a whopping 16 sixes. India won the seventh ODI of the series by 57 runs.
Rohit also revealed it was former India batsman Yuvraj Singh who told him to make the most of the opportunity as an opener and go for a big one.
I remember Yuvi (Yuvraj Singh) telling me, this is a great opportunity for you. You have just started to open the batting. He told me this is a good opportunity for you to make a big score. I was getting 40s, 50s, 60s. That was a good talk we had before the game, the 33-year old said.
When I went back inside, someone was telling me, if you would have batted for another over or so you would have broken (Virender) Sehwag’s record, said Rohit, who went to score 264 against Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in 2014 which remains the highest individual score.
The expectation in the dressing room is really high. There were three or four guys who wanted me to score 10 or 15 more runs, Yuvi (Yuvraj Singh) was one of them and maybe Shikhar Dhawan too, recalled Rohit.