Rohit Sharma wants the World Cup, and the arrival of Pragyan Ojha as the new BCCI chief selector could hardly have come at a better moment for the Indian veteran batter.
Ajit Agarkar has left the role and Ojha, a former India left-arm spinner and a friend of Rohit’s for many years, now takes charge of the selection committee at a time when the future of the 39-year-old opener in international cricket has been a regular talking point.
Questions over how long Rohit would carry on had been doing the rounds for months, and some reports even claimed that he would retire after an ODI in the England series. He did not, and he has continued to play.
With Agarkar gone and Ojha in his place, the batter now has a selector at the helm who knows him personally and who understands what drives him. The 2027 World Cup is the obvious target, and Ojha’s own words suggest that Rohit has never lost sight of it.
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Earlier, in an interview, Ojha recalled a private conversation with Rohit after India lost the World Cup, in which the batter made his ambitions clear.
He said: “When we lost the World Cup, I had a conversation like that with Rohit once. He would always talk about it: ‘I have to bring that trophy. I want that cup.’ So he’s always been that person who, you know, wants to achieve something big.”
The two have known each other for a long time, and Ojha has also spoken about a much older conversation that stayed with him. He said that cricket was rarely the topic when he and Rohit met away from the field, as they usually passed the time chatting about all sorts of other things.
One evening, though, the talk turned to the game, and Rohit offered a piece of advice that Ojha has carried with him since.
“Normally, we don’t talk that much cricket, Rohit and I; we just pass the time, we talk about random, different things," he said.
"Only on the ground is cricket discussed. There, I don’t know why we ended up talking about cricket. He said, ‘Brother, if you want to play for a long time, you have to become a match-winner. Because many people play for the country, but only those who are match-winners are remembered.’”
Asked when the original conversation with Rohit took place, Ojha placed it in the Under-19 days, which means it came before 2011, and he thinks the pair may have been in Dharamshala for a tournament at the time.
He admitted that he did not fully grasp the point back then, but that it started to make sense as he watched the growth of Virat Kohli and, later, Jasprit Bumrah.
Ojha believes that the idea explains a good deal about Rohit’s career, especially the years when the batter struggled to hold down a place in the side. He pointed out that Rohit’s name remained in the conversation even then, and he gave an example from the IPL in South Africa to explain why.
“You’ll notice, in every match where Rohit Sharma made a name for himself, back when he wasn’t getting selected, why was his name still there? Because he was a match-winner. I remember in South Africa, the match he won against KKR coming in as a middle-order batter," he added.
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Ojha is no stranger to speaking his mind on big issues in Indian cricket, as his comments during the Virat Kohli captaincy row in December 2021 showed. The former spinner gave his opinion on the controversy that followed Kohli’s press conference before India left for the tour of South Africa.
Kohli’s statements at that conference were in sharp contrast with those of the then BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, and the difference of opinion quickly turned into a public dispute. Kohli said that he was informed only 90 minutes before the BCCI meeting that he would be removed as the ODI captain.
He also said that his decision to step down as T20I captain had been welcomed as a progressive move, which went against Ganguly’s version that he had personally asked Kohli not to quit the role.
Ojha reacted on social media, making it clear that he felt the whole affair was an unnecessary distraction. He wrote: “Unnecessary! Hope the focus will be back on work. #IndianCricket.” He added that the issue would keep growing until the two parties sorted it out between themselves.
He also took what looked like a sly dig at Kohli with an analogy from the kitchen, saying: “A good chef knows what to show and what not to when he is trying to prepare a delicious dish! As the reputation of the kitchen and the restaurant is on him.”
Ojha has been just as direct about the pressure on India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir. He was asked about it in an interview after a tough period for the team, in which India dominated Sri Lanka in the T20 series but then struggled in the ODIs and lost a Test series at home to New Zealand.
The interviewer noted that New Zealand had won only two Tests in India before that series and took three this time, and that India had looked helpless against Sri Lanka as well.
Questions had also started to appear in the press about the pressure on Gambhir, with reports suggesting that he had a say in selection, that the BCCI had given him too much power, and that he himself had often criticised earlier coaches. Ojha accepted that scrutiny comes with the territory, but he said the answer lies with the coach and the team.
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“No, the pressure will certainly be there. Look, if you talk about the Indian team, it’s one of the most followed teams in cricket. So scrutiny will happen around it; even the smallest details will face scrutiny. That is inevitable. But as I said, if a question has arisen, the answer is in your hands.”
He went on to say that he knows Gambhir well from the 2007 and 2011 World Cups and respects both his contributions and his passion for the game, so he expects the coach to prepare properly with the time he has been given. Ojha also pointed to the early part of Gambhir’s tenure as a sign of how quickly fortunes can change.
“From how well I know Gauti bhai, I feel that with the time he has been given now, he must be preparing properly. As I said, how you start does not matter; how you finish is what is very important. If you look at the beginning, he started on a high: he came in as a mentor for KKR, won the trophy. He came to the main team, there was a slight dip. How you rise back up from there, that will be interesting. That will reflect his character.”
In July 2023, Ojha also shared his own 16-member India Test team for the 21st century on social media and invited fans to post theirs. His side was captained by Kohli, with MS Dhoni as the wicketkeeper, and Rohit appeared among the five players outside the starting eleven.
Ojha’s arrival will certainly be welcomed in the Rohit camp, but it would be a mistake to treat it as a guarantee of a place in the 2027 World Cup squad. A chief selector who knows a player well can understand his hunger and his temperament, yet he is also expected to judge him on form and fitness, and the best selectors are those who can separate friendship from duty.
Ojha’s own words about match-winners suggest that he will apply that standard to everyone, Rohit included.
What the change does offer is clarity, which the veteran batter has lacked for months. The talk of retirement was damaging because nobody inside the system seemed willing to say what the plan was, and a selector who has heard Rohit speak about the trophy first-hand is better placed to have that honest conversation. If Rohit keeps scoring and stays fit, he will have a strong case.
It is also worth remembering that Ojha has never shied away from tough calls, as his comments on Kohli and Gambhir showed. That directness could serve Indian cricket well, provided it is matched by patience.
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Soham Mukherjee is a content producer and writer, with a focus on cricket, football, tennis and Indian sports. His work has appeared in Goal.com previously, where he has covered the Premier League, La Liga, Champions League, FIFA World Cups and Indian football. Armed with an MA (Master's) in Sports Journalism from Symbiosis International University, he knew early on that his future wouldn’t be on the pitch but behind the pen, shaping narratives about the games he adores.
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