Rohit Sharma always comes across as a meticulous captain who prepares well and plans his moves in advance. The India captain seems to be satisfied with the way things have panned out on the eve of their World Cup opener against Pakistan.

“We had a great time in Perth,” he said. “We were there for nine days, and then we came to Brisbane. We prepared, we played a couple of practice games in Perth just to get used to the conditions, the pitches. Obviously you can’t travel all around Australia and play on all pitches, but we could get whatever we could get.

“I thought Perth was the right time zone for us to start. Obviously, the time difference is not too much, also, so you can easily get acclimatised, and that was also one of the reasons. I thought the way we went about the entire Perth leg was good for us.”

However, he spoke of the need for instinct too during matches.

“You’ve got to be instinctive as well,” Rohit said. “Sometimes you just have that feeling that this is the guy who will do the job for you. Yes, you have to look at the match-ups as well. We’ve been going through a lot of numbers all these days about how people have been successful in Australia.

“Although it’s a different time, not a lot of cricket has been played during this month in Australia, it was important for us to get some kind of data around what happens in October-November in Australia...

“We saw a lot of things about how you need to be successful firstly as a team and then as an individual, as well. We went through all of it, but obviously, like I said, it’s a bit of both. Sometimes you just feel that this guy is bowling pretty well, you need to just get him to play the game... he’s in good form...

“The message was given long before we came here, that if we need to change one or two players for the matchups for what sort of conditions we are playing in, guys will be ready for it.

Rohit didn’t agree that this was the biggest match of his career having already played a T20 World Cup final against Pakistan and won it (2007), and a Champions Trophy final (2017) and lost it.