LONDON: Acutely aware but dismissive of the "noise" around his future in international cricket, veteran Indian batting star Rohit Sharma says he knows that speculation won't stop till he is playing but he would rather focus on scoring runs instead of fighting it.
With a facile 138 at the Lord's on Sunday, Rohit could not prevent India's 27-run loss didn't look his usual, possibly trying to mask the insult and hurt he must have felt.
"The noise, since I made my debut was there. Till I am going to stay here, it is always going to be there, so it doesn't really matter too much," the 39-year-old, who became the oldest Indian centurion and first from the country to score a ton in 50-over cricket, told BCCI.TV.
"What really matters is what I do on the field, try and contribute to the success of the team. That's where all my focus is. Let the noise be there, if there is no noise there is no fun.
My job is inside, their job is outside, that's how I look at it.
"My job is with bat, come and play, represent my country, that's what I have been told to do since I made my debut, so that's what I am going to do," added the man, who is within touching distance of 12,000 ODI runs.
Under pressure, his 34th ODI ton was one of his best knocks in recent times.
Rohit said he has always enjoyed playing in England.
"I love playing in England. The atmosphere, the grounds, the pitches, when you turn up to play any format over here, it challenges you in different ways. And that's what you want as a cricketer. To be challenged in every way possible. I enjoyed out there in the middle," he said.
The century stand with Virat Kohli, who smashed 74, raised visions of an improbable win despite the steep chase of 388.
It didn't happen but their on-pitch understanding was still as smooth as it was a decade and half ago.
"We (him and Kohli) played our entire career together, so it was nice to have him in the middle, we have had so many partnerships.
It's fun batting together as we understand each other so much, bouncing off ideas," Rohit said.
Rohit did admit that it was disappointing to lose the series after starting off with a win in Birmingham.
"Little disappointed with the result as I thought we were playing good cricket.
How we started off in Birmingham, we played good cricket.
We fell a bit short in Cardiff with the bat not scoring enough runs.
"Here it was a massive total to chase and we tried whatever we could but we fell 20-25 runs short," Rohit said.
The Indian pace attack had a cumulative experience of 51 ODIs among four bowlers and Rohit predictably defended them.
"Again with bowling, you got to understand that these guys haven't played a lot of ODIs and you got give them time.
We can learn from this game, take things in our stride and when we again come across situation like this, we try and better ourselves," he said.
"Disappointed with the result, we couldn't finish off the game, we have to move on," he signed off.
