"Decided That I Need To Go...": Rohit Sharma Breaks Silence On 2023 ODI World Cup Heartbreak

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India captain Rohit Sharma broke his silence on the team's ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 final defeat against Australia for the first time since the tournament's conclusion.

"I had no idea how to come back from this the first few days. I don't know what to do. You know, my family, my friends kept me going, kept things pretty light around me, which was quite helpful. It wasn't easy to digest, but yeah, life moves on. You have to move on in life. But honestly, it was tough. It was not. It was not so easy to just move on. I've always grown up watching 50 over World Cup and to me that was, you know, the ultimate prize, the 50 over World Cup.

So we've worked all these years, you know, for that World Cup and it is disappointing, right? If you don't get through it and you don't get what you want, what you've been looking for all this while, what you were dreaming of, you get disappointed and you get frustrated as well. At times I thought we did everything we could from our side if someone asked me what went wrong because we won 10 games and in those 10 games, yes, we made mistakes. But those mistakes happen in every game. You cannot have a perfect game. You can have a near-perfect game but never a perfect game.

If you look at the other side, I am really proud of the team as well because how we played was simply outstanding. You don't get to perform like that every World Cup.

It would have given people a lot of joy, a lot of pride watching the team play after that finals, it was very hard to get back and start moving, which is why I decided that I need to go somewhere and just get my mind out of out of this. But then wherever I was, I realized that people were coming up to me and there they were, appreciating everyone's effort, how well we played.

Yeah, I mean, I feel for all, all of them, right? Because they all along with us, they were dreaming of lifting that World Cup along with us everywhere we went during this entire World Cup campaign, there was so much support from everyone, you know, who came to the stadium firstly, and then people who are watching it from home as well.

I want to appreciate what people have done for us in that 1 1/2 months. But again, if I think more and more on that, I just feel quite disappointed that we were not able to go through all the way for me to see, you know, people coming up to me and telling me that they were very proud of the team, you know, made me feel really good to a certain extent. And along with them I was healing as well because I felt OK. You know, this is the kind of things that you want to hear.

You know when you meet people they, when they understand what the player must be going through and when they now these kinds of things and bring out that frustration, that anger, it means a lot, you know, for us, for me, definitely it meant a lot because there was anger.

It was just pure love from the people that I met and it was wonderful to see that.

So you know it gives you motivation to get back and start working again and look for another ultimate prize."