India captain Rohit Sharma tried to ease the nerves on the eve of their semi-final against England in Adelaide on Thursday.

India haven’t won a ICC tournament since the 2013 Champions Trophy and that will be at the back of Rohit’s mind when he steps out for the toss at the Adelaide Oval. India have faltered at the knockout stages on several occasions since 2013 — the 2014 T20 World Cup final, 2016 T20 World Cup semi-final, 2017 Champions Trophy final and the 2019 ODI World Cup semi-final.

There will be enormous pressure on the players but the skipper maintained that one knockout match wouldn’t describe a player’s career.

“I think knockout games are important. We do understand that. It’s a simple logic to it, knockout games, because you get to play only once and there’s only one opportunity to do well in that knockout game,” Rohit said at the media conference on Wednesday.

“But for us, I think, not just for me, but for the players, what they’ve done in their entire career doesn’t define them by just one knockout game. The entire year you work so hard to get where you want to and to do well in whichever format you play. So that one particular game is not going to decide that.

“I think it’s important we do understand the importance of knockout, but at the same time, it’s also important to realise and understand what sort of effort you put in the entire year to come to that stage.”

Rohit said that the team has played well in the first phase of the tournament and one knockout game cannot undo their achievements.

“But again, it’s just a phase. It’s just one phase of the tournament. We do understand when you play this kind of tournament, you have to break it into parts. We’ve done one part of it really well. There are two more parts to go,” Rohit said. “But tomorrow (Thursday) is going to be one part of it where we have to play well to get the result.

“But yeah, specifically to talk about that, I think it’s important to understand that knockout games are important, and if you do well, it gives you that immense confidence. But we do not forget what has happened in the past...

“I think there’s a lot of effort that goes into putting ourselves and playing for the country and getting those efforts, getting those runs, getting those wickets, so I really don’t believe that one bad game in the knockout can truly define what kind of player you are.

“I think we can pride ourselves to be here at this point in time because we saw two of the quality teams which were knocked out, and anything can happen in this format. For us, I think we can take a lot of credit and pride ourselves in where we have come.”