Following his team's unbeaten run in the ICC Champions Trophy, the Indian skipper Rohit Sharma said that the future of Indian cricket is in safe hands, with plenty of young talent displaying the hunger, passion and talent needed on international level, reported ICC Cricket.
India's winning Champions Trophy campaign witnessed plenty of present-day and future stars like Shubman Gill (188 runs in five matches with a century), Shreyas Iyer (243 runs in five matches with two fifties), Axar Patel (109 runs in five matches with five wickets) and Hardik Pandya (99 runs in four matches and four wickets), KL Rahul (140 runs in five matches at an average of 140.00), Varun Chakravarthy (nine wickets) play a crucial role in team's second successive white-ball title win.
Sharma said the way his India side made it undefeated through the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 is indicative of their passion and commitment - and it bodes well for the future.Asked whether he agreed that the team could dominate international cricket over the next decade, Rohit talked about how the set-up has been created in order to support the progress of young talent.
"That is the whole point," he said as quoted by ICC. "You want to create your bench strength while you are playing. Whenever we had the opportunity in the last four or five years, we have always tried to give opportunities to all these players. They have grabbed it," he added.
He added that young players were shining across all formats of the game, giving rise to plenty of debates around selection.
"When you are discussing about which player to pick, who to drop, who is going to miss out on the opening eleven, that tells you there is so much depth in this team," he said.
On the white-ball front, the side looks forward to two global events in the next two years, with a T20 World Cup on home soil (and co-hosted by Sri Lanka) in early 2026 and a Cricket World Cup in 2027.
While hoping at least at this stage to be a part of both teams, Rohit believes the platform has been set for the side to continue on as a force.
"I can surely say that Indian cricket for the future is in very, very safe hands, looking at how the players are coming up, how they want to take that responsibility, how much hunger is there."
"The passion, the talent, all of that is there. It is just about now going out there and doing it," he concluded.
