Lovely shot! So easy on the eye! Elegance! Class! The moment you could hear those words in the background, you could get a sense that Rohit Sharma was at the crease. On Friday night, Rohit Sharma gave the capacity crowd at the HPCA stadium in Dharamsala its money’s worth and a hundred more reasons to cheer. The result might not have gone the way Rohit would have wished for but those walking back from the stadium would remember the knock for all the right reasons. It was vintage Rohit on display - caressing boundaries through the gaps, sweet contact with the bat, some effortless shots over the boundary - all of it made to look so easy. He did have a nervy start surviving a close LBW shout in the very first over that he faced, but once he got a boundary in the very same over, there was no stopping him. That boundary had a stamp of authority and was only a sign of the dominance to come in the overs to follow. But what has gone into the making of such a huge knock? In an exclusive chat with BCCI.TV, Rohit Sharma delves into the thought process behind his batting and speaks about the three figure mark he will remember for a long time. Disappointing result for the team but personally you couldn’t have asked for a better start to the series. It is always important to start a series well. I did have that in my mind when I went out to bat. My focus was on getting some runs in the very first game since it sets the tone for the rest of the series. I feel it is a good start. Obviously disappointed with the loss but we have to regroup as soon as we can and come back really strong. You have two ODI double centuries to your name. Getting your first ever T20I century must give you immense joy. Any hundred you get for your country in any format it is always special and I will cherish this. Unfortunately it didn’t come in a winning cause which is disappointing. It doesn’t matter how many runs you score. You are not happy if your team doesn’t win at the end of the day. But personally, I felt good batting out there. Conditions to bat here (in Dharamsala) can get tough with ball doing a bit. How much of thought went into your innings tonight? When I went to bat, I was just trying to assess the conditions because I have never played in these conditions in Dharamsala. We were expecting something off the pitch but it didn’t really happen. Once we got to know that the pitch was really good to bat on we really pushed hard in the middle. We always wanted to be ahead and put the pressure on the bowlers which is exactly what happened. Personally, I just wanted to hold my shape as long as possible while batting. In T20 format you do at times lose your shape and you try to hit the ball too hard. I wanted to just time the ball because it was a brilliant pitch to bat on.

My only focus was to get the team to a good score and that kept me going forward to get that many runs. We knew with the dew coming in, it will be hard for the bowlers bowling in the second innings. So we wanted to get to a par score and having said that we knew that a total around 170-plus would be a very decent target here. You spoke about the partnership with Virat Kohli. Both are naturally attacking batsmen. At such a scenario who decides who will play the role of the aggressor or complement the other?

That century stand with Virat Kohli was really important from the team’s perspective to get to a very good score. In any format if you get big partnerships, you are bound to get a big score on the board. We both are natural stroke makers and both of us like to play shots. It was an ideal platform for both of us to accelerate and keep playing our shots. We just wanted to keep pushing ourselves to get to a good score. What we really did well was running between the wickets and putting pressure on their bowlers whenever a new bowler would come to bowl. If you get a boundary in the first or the second ball when a new bowler comes to bowl, you always put a lot of pressure on that bowler and the captain to set fields as well. The bowler then begins to think and there are a lot of things that go on in his head at that moment. We did that successfully on most occasions and that plan worked for us. We will try and continue to do that. You have played many big T20 knocks in the IPL as well. How do you go about planning your T20 innings? My mode of playing is very simple. I assess the conditions and the match situation. While playing for IPL and India my biggest strength has been to analyse what is happening in the middle and then go forward. That is what I have always done and I will keep doing that because it has really helped me get to good scores over the years. I try to do it when I go out to bat but it may not happen every time. But, the idea behind my batting has been to push myself forward and keep batting till the end. We had a chat within the team that one batsman from the top four has to bat till the 16th or 17th over. I am glad I could do that.