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Xtra Time Web Desk: Team India;s newly appointed ODI captain Rohit Sharma on Thursday said that his role as a captain will be more off the field rather inside the field. Rohit was named India’s new ODI skipper after he replaced Virat Kohli as captain for the upcoming South Africa tour.

In an exclusive chat with Boria Majumder on RevSportz Xtra Time You Tube channel, new captain Rohit Sharma shared his thoughts on a number of topics – from winning a World Cup, his philosophy as captain, role of Virat Kohli, Rahul Dravid as a Head Coach and lots more. Here are the excerpts:

Philosophy of captaincy:

I think captaincy is to stand at the back. In terms of performance he needs to be at the forefront but while doing everything else he needs to take a back seat. He has to ensure rest of the players are getting their job done in whatever way they can. A captain needs to put his hands around everyone from behind. That is what I meant by saying taking the backseat. A captain looks good when the team looks good. It is the other way round when the team performs horribly.

What I done at Mumbai Indians is because of the players that I had. Honestly speaking I had a very little role to play at Mumbai.

My role is more outside than inside and that’s what I believe in. You give a role to player to go out there and execute. It all happens off the field, not inside the field. Once you are in you have three hours to execute your plans and there is very little you can change within that three hours. There are 11 guys playing and you have to look at all of them. My role is not much in the field but more off it. Preparation, comfort, freedom, planning and strategies happen off the field. My role as a captain is 20 percent on the field and 80 percent off the field.

Role of Virat Kohli:

A batter of Kohli’s quality is always needed in the squad. To have an average of 50 plus in the T20 format, it is crazy and unreal. Obviously, with the experience he has, he has batted and bailed India out so many times from difficult situations.

The quality and his kind of batsmanship is required. Plus, he is still a leader of the team. All those things put together, you don’t want to miss out. You don’t want to ignore that kind of stuff. His presence is very important to the team

Winning a World Cup: 

When you play the sport, you want to achieve the best and for me the best is to win the championship. You may score many hundreds or take loads of wickets but winning a world cup stays with you. You know why because that’s a collective effort from a team. At the end of the day we play a team sport. So what you achieve as a team is very important to me. It is something that I want to achieve, you know a team goal which is to win a championship.

There is a lot of things we need to do to win a championship. We have the team, the players and support staffs now. It’s just about what we do prior to the World Cup is very very important. When you hunt for that championship, there is so much pressure from people’s expectation. One thing that I will be focus on is to try and take away that pressure from the boys. How we can do that is by doing little things right. We need to give the players security and freedom to express themselves. We have quite a few T20 matches (20-25) before the World Cup next year so we will have a fair idea on what we need to do as a team to get everything right.

Rahul Dravid as Head Coach :

Rahul bhai is a brilliant cricketer we all know that without a doubt. We all know how he has played his cricket. On many occasions he has come out and said he was not talented but had to work hard on it. I think that is going to reflect on this team as well making sure we work hard as a team. Nothing is given on a platter to anyone. Ever since we had our first meeting he made it very clear that he will be there to help us all. He had a word with each and every individual in the team trying to know what actually they can offer or what role they prefer.