"Happy To See The Progress Of Indian Cricket Under Rohit Sharma": Sourav Ganguly

Former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly on Friday said Rohit Sharma's leadership qualities played a big hand in India's unbeaten run in the ongoing T20 World Cup, and urged the team to play with freedom in the final against South Africa to end a 11-year wait for an ICC trophy. India will face the Proteas in the title clash at Bridgetown, Barbados, and will be eyeing their first global trophy since winning the Champions Trophy in 2013. "I'm very happy for Rohit Sharma. Life comes full circle. Six months ago he was not even the captain of Mumbai Indians and the same man is now leading India to a World Cup final, unbeaten," Ganguly said after being roped in as the brand ambassador of Veedol.

The former BCCI president revealed that Rohit was reluctant to take up the captaincy role after Virat Kohli vacated the hot seat.

"He has played two World Cup finals where he has gone into the final unbeaten. That speaks of his captaincy and leadership quality and I'm not surprised because he became captain when I was the BCCI president and when Virat didn't want to captain India anymore.

"It took a lot of time to make him captain because he was not ready to captain. It took a lot of pushing from all of us to make him captain and I'm very happy to see the progress of Indian cricket under him." Ganguly said winning IPL titles could sometimes be more challenging because of the duration of the tournament.

"Rohit has the record of winning five IPL titles, which is a huge achievement. Winning an IPL sometimes is more difficult. Don't misquote me, I'm not saying IPL is better than international cricket.

"But you have to win 16-17 (12-13) matches to win an IPL; here you need to win 8-9 matches to win a World Cup. The honour is more in winning the