India skipper Rohit Sharma has expressed excitement over the prospect of playing against Pakistan in an overseas Test series but at the same time maintained that he’s only looking at purely from a cricketing angle. In recent years, Cricket Australia and England Cricket Board have expressed interest in hosting the two sides for a Test series.

In a chat with Club Prairie Fire podcast, co-hosted by Adam Gilchrist and Michael Vaughan, Rohit said it will be “awesome” to play against Pakistan, and he would “love” both sides to resume playing bilateral cricket on a regular basis.

Bilateral cricket between India and Pakistan has been put on hold since Misbah-ul-Haq’s team last toured India to play a three-match ODI series way back in 2012-13. Since then both sides have faced each other multiple times but only in major ICC tournaments.

“Yeah, I would love to,” Rohit said responding to Vaughan’s query on whether as the Indian captain he would want to play regularly against Pakistan outside of ICC tournaments.

“At the end of the day, we want to be in contest and I think it will be a great contest between the two sides. We anyway play them in ICC trophies, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s just pure cricket that I’m looking at. I’m not interested in anything else. It’s pure cricket, game between bat and ball. It’ll be a great contest,” Rohit added.

Rohit is the first big name in Indian cricket to publicly voice his opinion on the subject that has often been thrown to the government’s court by India’s cricket administrators.

Responding to Vaughan’s question on whether for the sake of the health of Test cricket, both countries must engage in the longest format, Rohit said, “I totally believe that. They’re a good team. They have got a superb bowling line-up. So it’ll be a good contest especially if you play overseas conditions. That’ll be awesome.”

Besides Cricket Australia and ECB, there have been several attempts from neighbouring cricket boards to host bilateral cricket between India and Pakistan in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the UAE.

Not a big fan of Impact Player rule

Sharing his insights on the Impact Player rule in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), Rohit said he’s “not a fan” of it as he feels it’ll hamper the growth of allrounders in Indian cricket. The rule was introduced in IPL 2023 and allows teams to bring in a 12th player at any point in a match to replace a player from the XI after the toss.

“I’m not a big fan of impact player. You are taking out so much from the game just to make it little entertainment for the people around. But if you look (at) genuinely just cricketing aspect of it…. I can give you so many examples – guys like Washington Sundar, Shivam Dube are not getting to bowl, which for us (India team) is not a good thing,” he said.

“I generally feel that it is going to hold back (development of allrounders) because eventually cricket is played by 11 players, not 12 players,” he added.

At a time when Indian selectors are looking to fill in the all-rounder’s slot in the T20 World Cup squad, Rohit’s comments could potentially be a wake-up call for the probables eyeing the spot. The Ajit Agarkar-led BCCI selection committee is set to finalise and submit the provisional 15-man squad in the next two weeks.