Mumbai Indians (MI) captain Rohit Sharma heaped effusive praise over the team's ex-head coach Ricky Ponting, recalling how the former Australia skipper's words motivated the side after having lost the first five matches of the IPL 2014.
Jointly hosted by UAE and India because of the general elections in India, the IPL that year saw MI at the bottom of the points table after the first leg of the team's campaign in the Middle-East.
It was then, Rohit remembers, Ponting's pep talk inspired an amazing turnaround in Mumbai's fortunes, as the team won seven of its next nine matches and qualified for the play-offs.
"That was pretty tough, we were going through tough times. There was a lot of pressure from the spectators, people in Mumbai are quite passionate. Our owners are also very passionate, we were in Dubai for five games, we lost all those games," said Rohit during an Instagram live chat session with Australia's David Warner.
"Luckily for me, I had Ponting around then, Ponting is an impactful person. He was always motivating the younger guys, he was only going to talk to younger guys, he was not worried about the senior guys."
"His idea was to make sure that the young guys don't drift away much, once we returned to India in 2014, things changed for us, he gave us a pep talk and we rallied around that," he added.
Even though MI lost the eliminator against Chennai Super Kings (CSK), the turnaround must've boosted the side's confidence a lot.
As it happened, Rohit Sharma's men won the IPL the following year and repeated their feat in 2017 and 2019 seasons as well to become the most successful team in the league's history with four titles, including the first one in 2013.
(Inputs from ANI)
