Former Indian assistant coach and presenter Abhishek Nayar has recalled how the Indian opener Rohit Sharma worked on his fitness in 2011 after a news channel body-shamed him after being left out of the ODI World Cup 2011 squad.
Speaking on The Great Indian Cricket Show on Doordarshan, the former coach revealed how Rohit was reluctant to hit the gym until he was body-shamed by a news channel for his poor fitness, stating that the image stuck in his mind for a long time.
“We used to argue a lot because I trained heavily, while he relied more on skill. I would tell him, ‘Come on, let’s hit the gym,’ and he would say, ‘Leave it, I will score runs.’ There was nothing wrong with that mindset; fitness culture and the Virat Kohli phenomenon had not yet transformed Indian cricket. The turning point came when a news channel published his photo with a circle drawn around his belly. That image stuck in his mind,” Nayar said.
Further, Nayar strolled down memory lane to recall his conversation with Rohit Sharma after he was excluded from the World Cup 2011 squad. With IPL commencing in a month and a half, Rohit entered the cash-rich league with a four-pack, working hard on his fitness.
“When the World Cup squad was announced and he was not selected, we were at his house. He expected to be picked. IPL was scheduled to take place after about a month and a half, and he told me, ‘Nayar, whatever it takes in these six weeks, I need to enter the IPL with at least a four-pack.’ People may not believe it, but he entered that IPL with a four-pack. For him, skill was never the issue. It was always about fitness and using that to elevate his skill set,” he added.
