Losing the ODI World Cup final to Australia hit India captain Rohit Sharma so hard that "it was very hard to get back and start moving on". Speaking to fans helped him heal, he said in a social-media video on Wednesday.
Twenty-four days after the final in Ahmedabad, which India lost after winning all ten of their games in the run-up to the title clash, Rohit put out the message on Instagram, saying, "I had no idea how to come back from this. The first few days I didn'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 life moves on. You have to move on in life. But, honestly, it was tough. It was not so easy to just move on.
"I have always grown up watching 50-over World Cup, and to me that was the ultimate prize. We have worked all these years 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."
Australia, now six-time ODI World Cup champions, had lost their first two games at the World Cup - one of them to India - before getting on a hot streak that culminated with them winning the trophy. In the final, on a pitch later rated "average" by the ICC where Australia brought their most ruthless game to the table, India put up a below-par 240, which was chased down with seven overs in hand for a six-wicket win.
"I thought we did everything we could from our side. If someone will ask me, what went wrong… because we won ten games, and in that ten games, yes, we made mistakes, but that mistake happens in every game that you play. You cannot have a perfect game. You can have a near-perfect game. But you cannot have a perfect game," Rohit said. "If I look on the other side of it, I'm 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. And I am pretty sure I am, at least, how we played up until that final, it would have given people a lot of joy, a lot of pride watching the team play."
Rohit said that he had to get away from it all after the World Cup final to wrap his head around what had happened. And that his interactions with people he met helped him "heal".
"After the final, it was very hard to get back and start moving on, which is why I decided that I need to go somewhere and just get my mind out of this," he said. "But then, wherever I was, I realised that people were coming up to me and they were appreciating everyone's effort, how well we played. I feel for all of them. 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, who came to the stadium firstly, and people who were watching it from home as well. I want to appreciate what the people have done for us, in that one-and-a-half months. But again, if I think more and more about that I 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, telling me that they were proud of the team, you know made me feel really good to a certain extent. And along with them, I was healing as well. I felt, okay these are the kind of things you want to hear. When you meet people, when they understand what the player must be going through and when they know these kind of things… and not to bring out that frustration, that anger, it means a lot for us, for me definitely it meant a lot because there was no anger, it was just pure love from people that I met and it was wonderful to see that. So it gives you motivation to get back and start working again and look for another ultimate prize."