Staying in the present is Rohit's mantra

Scoring centuries appears a lot easier task for Rohit Sharma than the thought of scoring a century at this moment.

With five centuries, a half-century and 647 runs, he has set a gold standard in this World Cup. In the process, a handful of records have fallen by the wayside and some more are at touching distance – Sachin Tedulkar’s tally of 673 runs in a single edition being one of them. With at least one match left for India in the tournament, Rohit in all probability will surpass his illustrious fellow Mumbaikar but the opener says he isn’t here for records. In fact, he wasn’t even aware about how close he was to breaking Tendulkar’s record.

The secret behind his success, he said, is to keep thinking that he hasn’t played a single ODI or scored a century or any run. He, however, admitted that this constant reminder about his feats was distracting.

“It is very difficult,” he noted. “Trust me because you're in that fraternity where you meet so many people. They will talk about how well you're batting, how many runs you're getting, how many hundreds you've scored. But to just keep away from all that is very important. And I'm trying to do that. Fortunate that we have a bunch of guys around us who do not discuss these kinds of things too much, about personal milestones. And my family is here to distract me from that. So those are the things that are keeping me away from staying in the past, because I think -- and I totally believe -- that staying in the past is not as important as staying in the present. So, I'm trying to do that,” he offered.

Equally difficult is to shut your mind to criticism, like the recent outburst of Sanjay Manjrekar and Ravindra Jadeja at each other. Rohit was of the view that each individual had his own way of dealing with such situations.

“See, that's the challenge (to ignore criticism) for a sportsman,” Rohit began. “All this distraction will happen, but every individual is different, and it depends on how he wants to think about that particular incident or situation. For me, like I said just now, I want to stay away from all of that and enjoy the beautiful weather in England. I have my family here as well. So, most of the time I'm trying to do that rather than all those talks going around and things like that. Because as long as you're playing that will happen.”

Known for his big hundreds, Rohit has got out soon after reaching his century on three occasions this World Cup. While he said he wasn’t too concerned about not making it bigger, he did admit that he was disappointed at gifting his wickets away.

“Personally, I was disappointed because after a hundred, I've said it many times, bowlers can’t really get you out; it's your mistake that can cost you your wicket at that point,” he noted. “So, I was disappointed with that, the last three hundreds I got, I couldn't go on to bat as deep as I could. But I would take that hundred. And the only reason I say that is because eventually we won the game, except the one against England which I think we came pretty close as well,” he offered.