Rohit Sharma Hails Ricky Ponting For The Way He Handled The Team In The IPL 2014

Rohit Sharma may be the most successful captain in the history of the Indian Premier League, as far as winning the most number of titles is concerned, but the ride hasn’t been bereft of adversities.

Rohit started off his journey as the captain of the Mumbai Indians after Ricky Ponting relinquished the job in the midst of the 2013 season. Sharma led the side to their maiden IPL win and come the next edition, everyone expected Sharma-led Mumbai Indians to do the same.

But the 2014 season started on a disastrous note for the Mumbai Indians as they went on to lose their first five games.

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Rohit Sharma credits Ricky Ponting for the resurgence of Mumbai Indians in the 2014 IPL

Sharma, in a recent Instagram Live session with David Warner, reminisced about that phase and also credited head coach Ricky Ponting for their eventual resurgence that saw them win five of their next seven games, which also included a four-match winning streak and qualify for the playoffs.

“That was pretty tough, we were going through tough times. There was a lot of pressure from the spectators, people in Mumbai are quite passionate. Our owners are also very passionate, we were in Dubai for five games, we lost all those games,” Rohit Sharma told David Warner on Instagram Live.

“Luckily for me, I had Ponting around then, Ponting is an impactful person. He was always motivating the younger guys, he was only going to talk to younger guys, he was not worried about the senior guys,” Rohit said.

He added: “His idea was to make sure that the young guys don’t drift away much, once we returned to India in 2014, things changed for us, he gave us a pep talk and we rallied around that,”

Mumbai, the then defending champions, managed to qualify for the playoffs courtesy their outrageous five-wicket-win over Rajasthan Royals but their campaign eventually came to an end at the hands of Chennai Super Kings in the Eliminator courtesy a seven-wicket defeat.

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