Skipper keeps critics at bay with welcome return to form
CUTTACK: Rohit Sharma generally enjoys his interactions with journalists and often sports a smiling face at press conferences. But at the pre-match media conference ahead of the first game of the ongoing ODI series against England in Nagpur, Rohit lost his cool, a rarity for him.
Asked to reflect on his prolonged lean patch and whether he had been asked to clarify his future plans to selectors, the India captain had shot back, “How is it relevant that I talk about my future plans sitting here when there are three ODIs and a Champions Trophy coming up?
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“(Such) reports have been going around for a number of years, but I am not here to clarify those. For me, these three games and the Champions Trophy are very important, so my focus is on these games. We will see what happens afterwards.”
Thankfully, on Sunday, Rohit was back to his usual best with bat in hand in the second ODI against England. He looked calm and composed and would have soothed many nerves with his 32nd ODI century.
Later, at the presentation ceremony, Rohit, an easy choice for the Player-of-the-Match award at the Barathi Stadiumreflected on his approach.
“I really broke it down into pieces about how I wanted to bat. It’s a 50-over format, a little longer than T20 and a lot shorter than Test cricket. Obviously, you still need to break it down and assess what you need to do at regular intervals and that is what I kept doing. It was important for a batter who gets set to bat as deep as possible and that was my focus.”
Prior to Sunday’s century – his second fastest in ODIs – Rohit’s last 16 innings across formats had yielded 6, 5, 23, 8, 2, 52, 0, 8, 18, 11, 3, 6, 10, 3, 9, and 2. He had scored 166 runs at an average of 10.37. During this period, he managed to score 30 or more runs only once and had sub-10 scores 11 times. The only half century came against New Zealand in the Bengaluru Test in Oct last year.
However, Rohit’s ODI scores since his last century (131) against Afghanistan in the ODI World Cup on Oct 11, 2023, are 86, 48, 46, 87, 4, 40, 61, 47, 47, 58, 64, 35 and 2. It’s quite good considering he was consistently scoring half-centuries or getting out in the 40s.
However, now that he has retired from T20Is after leading India to the T20 World Cup title last year – and that ODIs are played less these days – his lack of runs across formats came under the spotlight.
Naturally, Rohit was long overdue for an innings which fits his nickname, the ‘Hitman’. Rohit will be hoping this is not a one-off and that he can find consistency and rediscover the knack of scoring big hundreds heading into the Champions Trophy.
“Looking at the pitch, when you play on black soil, (the ball) tends to skid on a bit, so it’s important that you show the full face of the bat when you are batting initially. Once I got into my innings, I understood what they were trying to do – bowling into my body and trying to not give any room, keep it on the stumps,” Rohit said about his approach to the innings.
“That’s where I prepared my plan as well, what I wanted to do with those kinds of deliveries, trying to access the gaps which were there. It’s about understanding what you want to do as a batter and obviously I got very good support from (Shubman) Gill to start with and then Shreyas (Iyer),” acknowledged the skipper.
With Gill, Rohit shared a 136-run opening stand in under 17 overs. The Punjab opener, “a very, very classy player who doesn’t get overawed by the situation” – according to his skipper – was all praise for his senior opening partner.
“He makes things much easier than what it is,” Gill said after the game. “The way he dominated the fast bowlers today was just a treat to watch from the non-striker’s end.”
Rohit had spoken about ticking all the boxes before the Champions Trophy starts on Feb 19. With his trademark innings leading India to series winning victory, he certainly has ticked a very important checkbox for himself as well as the team.
Meanwhile, teammate Ravindra Jadaja brushed aside any dressing-room concerns about the skipper’s lean patch. “In our dressing room, there was no such atmosphere (of pressure). He is such a great player that he knows exactly how to build an innings,” Jadeja said about Rohit’s match-winning century.
“It’s just a matter of one good innings. As you saw, it didn’t even feel like he hadn’t scored runs in the previous innings. The shots he played were smooth and he looked confident. He played normal strokes,” said Jadeja.
