by Australia are the other favorites to play in the final and Sri Lanka also has a chance on the outside.
“There’s definitely a possibility,” Rohit said. “We’ve already talked about it. We also need to prepare the boys for this.
“The Shardul Thakur is important because he comes into this plan for us. I don’t know how ready he is, knowing he just got married. We don’t know how many throws he threw. But yes, that thought process definitely exists. If we do what we’re doing here and get the desired result, we can certainly think about doing something else in Ahmedabad.”
In the Kolkata test against Sri Lanka, the wet weather played as much a role as the pitch, helping India simulate conditions overseas. While India should be able to prepare a green field in Ahmedabad, the weather is expected to be hot and dry, with maximum temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius – in short, nothing like London in June.
“It will be a great achievement for us (reaching the WTC final) but we know we have to overcome this last hurdle and on top of that we also have to win the next game so we are focusing on this test of how we can win this game and not looking too far ahead into the future because after this game we have one more test match to play and then there are two months of the IPL,” said Rohit.
“There’s a lot of time to think about the final but now it’s very important that we focus on that and see how we can turn that around and win this game as well because we were under pressure in the last game, we can certainly expect the same here, so we have to be prepared for that.”
Pressed to look ahead to the WTC Final, Rohit said it would be exciting if the two teams playing in it met under neutral conditions.
“It’s going to be a different football game, actually for both teams,” he said. “Actually, I don’t want to talk about the world championship in testing. We’re not there yet. We want to win this game and then talk about it. It will be the right thing.
“But speaking from the outside, I clearly don’t think England will qualify, so both teams that play in the final will be neutral teams. It will be exciting. There is no advantage at home, no advantage of conditions. India has played a lot of cricket in England over the past few years. Australia played a lot of cricket (there). Sri Lanka and South Africa are also in the mix (South Africa is off the bill). They probably played a lot of cricket there too. These will not be foreign conditions as such for both teams that will advance to the final. It will be a good matchup between the two teams, regardless of who those teams are.
