Rohit has come a long way since making his IPL debut for the now-defunct Deccan Chargers way back in 2008. Four years before he led MI to their maiden IPL success, Rohit had already become an IPL winner in 2008 with DC, where he shared the dressing room with some of the behemoths of world cricket – Andrew Symonds, Adam Gilchrist to name a few. In the same dressing room was Pragyan Ojha, one of Rohit’s close friends, someone the star India batter goes back a long way. Ojha met Rohit for the first time during an U-15 camp and their friendship blossomed over the years.

However, Ojha, the former India left-arm spinner revealed that it wasn’t initially smooth sailing with Rohit when the two first met. In fact, after Ojha dismissed ‘special player’, Rohit in the first match the two played together, the Mumbai batter was being ‘aggressive’ with Ojha.

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“When I first met Rohit in the U-15 national camp, everyone said he was a very special player. There, I played against him and took his wicket. Rohit being a typical Bombay guy, didn’t speak much but was aggressive when he played. In fact, I was very surprised as to why he was being so aggressive with me when we didn’t know each other! But after that our friendship began to grow,” Ojha remembered said during the show ‘My Time with Rohit’ on Jio Cinema.

Today, Rohit has come a long way. Last year when Rohit was leading the Indian team in West Indies for a limited-overs series, he and Ojha had a bit of a banter. Ojha had remarked that Rohit’s relation with his former opening partner Shikhar Dhawan shows signs of Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly as batting together helped their friendship grow over time. When asked about this comment, Rohit delivered a gem of a reaction: “Pragyan? Pragyan aaj kal commentary karne laga hai kya? Sahi hai, chalo achhi baat hai (Pragyan? Has he started doing commentary? Well, alright, it’s good),” said Rohit in a hilarious reply.

The former India spinner recalled another incident that helped him strengthen his bond with Rohit. “Till the time Rohit got a chance to play for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy we had just known each other. But our friendship grew when we came to a common point. He was a good mimic and I really like people who can play pranks, and Rohit is among them. We used to feel the pressure of representing India at the U-19 level. So, whenever he saw that I was feeling the heat, he would mimic something that would release the tension and there was laughter all around,” he said.