Rohit Sharma recalls his reaction after snub from India's 2011 World Cup squad

April 2 2022 marked the 11th anniversary of India winning the ODI World Cup in 2011. It was arguably one of the greatest days in the history of Indian cricket. It is to be noted that the Asian side won the WC after 28 years.

Under the leadership of MS Dhoni, the men in blue won their second ODI WC. The team saw some vital contributions from the likes of Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan etc. However, one name missing from the squad was Rohit Sharma. He wasn't selected in India's squad for the 2011 WC.

The "Hitman" was still struggling to cement his spot in the Indian team back then, and wasn't a regular. Thus, he recently drew light on what transpired when he got to know that he wasn't a part of the 2011 WC squad. He stated that he was playing a series in South Africa when the squad was announced.

“It is very hard. Honestly, it’s not easy because World Cup is something that you always dream of playing and being part of the World Cup. And plus, contributing to the team’s success. I still remember I was in South Africa at that point and we were playing the series when we got the news. I had no one to talk to about this. At that point, I was just in my room sitting and thinking about what went wrong and what I could have done better and all of that,” said Rohit Sharma while speaking to Jemimah Rodrigues on Dream 11.

Further on, the opener spoke about how he realized that it wasn't the end of the world as he still had a lot of cricket left in him. Sharma then spoke about how it's ok to be sad and dejected, but also further work on one's skills.

“But I think, it’s important that at that stage I was, we’re talking about like ten years from now, and I was only 23 or 24 at that point. So, I knew that there’s lot of cricket left in me and it’s not the end of the world and it was more important for me to comeback from this. What has happened has happened, there is nothing you can change about it.

You can be disappointed, you can be frustrated, and that’s allowed because it’s only natural. You get dejected and frustrated. But in that frustration, I did not want to get out of my path and I wanted to do things I thought of which is to get better as a cricketer and see what went wrong. It was a very tough time and I went by a philosophy of thing that okay tough moments will not last forever but tough people will so I wanted to get really tough and how I do my skill training and all of that," he added.