Former T20 World Cup-winning captain Rohit Sharma said India's prolonged global title drought, spanning over a decade, may have been fueled by an underlying dread of failure among its elite batters.

Rohit chalked up India's 13-year wait for a major crown, between the 2011 ODI World Cup victory under MS Dhoni and the 2024 T20 World Cup triumph under his own captaincy, to this psychological element.

“I have always believed that when the tide is going down, it's not going to stay down forever. It will come up at some stage. But I didn't think it would take 13 years. I didn't think it would go down so much that it would take 13 years to come back up," Rohit said in a JioHotstar show.

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"The last World Cup we won was in 2011, and then we won again in 2024. That's 13 years. Yes, we did win the Champions Trophy in 2013, so technically it was an 11-year ICC trophy drought. But 11 years is still a long time," one of India's greatest captains said.

"We always believed that we had to keep doing the right things, and we did keep doing the right things. Unfortunately, something was missing. There was something we weren't able to do. I felt it might have been a fear of failure creeping into all of us, maybe yes, maybe not, I don't know, but that was my feeling," said the former captain.

Rohit, who now plays only ODIs after retiring from Tests and T20Is, disclosed that the team management, former coach Rahul Dravid, sought to help fear by giving players freedom and clear roles.

"We wanted to remove that fear. And how do you do that? By giving everyone freedom and clarity. By telling them, 'You are the guy, you are going to do the job for me, and no matter what happens, we will back you as much as we can," he added.

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"Along with that, giving clarity about their role and what we expect from them. I wanted to do this individually, to speak to players one-on-one and tell them, 'This is what we expect, this is your role," said the former captain.

"By doing this, you build a strong relationship with the player. And when the time comes for him to go out there and perform, he won't be afraid. He will take it on. Because if the captain and coach have told me this is what they expect, I'm not going to be afraid to do it," Rohit said.