Dharamsala, Dec 9 (IANS) On the eve of his captaincy debut for India in the first One-day International (ODI) match against Sri Lanka, Rohit Sharma feels that basics of leading a side remain the same though the difference in captaining a club and the national team is big.

Rohit, who has captained Mumbai Indians to three Indian Premier League (IPL) titles, will skipper the Indian team in the ODIs and Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) against Sri Lanka in place of a rested Virat Kohli.

“IPL and international cricket is completely different. It will be a different ball game all together. The pressure and mindset before a game is different. But the process and basics of captaincy leading any team will remain the same,” Rohit said on Saturday.

“These are different set of players what I had in the IPL team but having played with these guys for some time now, I do understand their strengths and weaknesses. It will be all about going there and executing and making everyone comfortable. That will be the idea,” Rohit added.

Rohit, however, felt that he will do his best to ensure to continue the good work the team has been doing.

“I don’t need to change anything. I just need to carry from where we left as a team. I myself will not change much. I will try to be at the present and make those changes when necessary,” the Mumbai right-hander said.

Even though India have dominated Sri Lanka in the last few series, 30-year-old Rohit felt that every series is different from one other. India won 9-0 across the three formats in Sri Lanka in earlier in the year. On this tour, Sri Lanka lost the Test series 0-1.

“Yes we have put them under pressure when we played them in Sri Lanka and won all five ODIs. I believe every new series is different and it will bring different challenges and we got to do what we do as a team. We need to concentrate on basic and little things which eventually add up to bigger things,” he said.

“Our idea will be the same. If we can do that, we have seen that we get the result. We stay in the present so our focus in on the first ODI,” he added.

The captain reckoned that he possesses enough arsenal to deal with any situations.

“We will be put to different situations and it will be important how we react to those. In Sri Lanka, we were put under pressure in few situations and we came out it really well, we showed a lot of character,” he said.

“Here at times, we will be put under pressure and we have guys to stand up and respond to those situation.”

–IANS
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