India skipper Rohit Sharma has said that while there were different challenges during India’s Test tour of Australia in 2018-19 and then in 2020-21, both series wins were like ‘gold’ for the Indian team, as the twin wins gave a big boost to Indian Test cricket. Rohit was part of both the squads when India won the Test series Down Under, first under Virat Kohli’s captaincy and then under Ajinkya Rahane’s leadership. Rohit said that while winning a bilateral series is a good boost for Indian cricket, fans eventually start looking for ICC trophies, which were missing from India’s cabinet for 11 years before they won the T20 World Cup last year. “It’s not about OK if you win a tournament, if you win a bilateral series, what happens next? People remember that you have not won a single ICC trophy since I think 13 or 14 years,” Rohit said while speaking to Michael Clarke on the Beyond23 Cricket podcast. “2013 was when we won the Champions Trophy, and then 2011, 11 years ago. And I remind you every day. Yeah, absolutely that we need to win trophies. Now, enough of all this bilateral series,” Rohit added. Kohli’s team was the first Indian side to win a Test series in Australia, creating history. On the second occasion, India had travelled just eight months after COVID-19 had struck the world. “But look, winning the Test series in Australia twice was like gold for us, the way we played and how everyone took that responsibility, because the first one in 2018 had its challenge, and the 2021 series in COVID times had its challenge,” Rohit said. “You know, we were short of a lot of players, a lot of players went back home, a lot of injuries. So a lot of new players who haven’t played a lot of first-class cricket as well managed to pull things around for us,” Rohit added. The India skipper scored 106 runs in two matches in the 2018-19 series, at an average of 35.33 with just one half-century to his name. In the 2020-21 series, Rohit scored 129 runs in two matches at an average of 32.55, with another fifty.