BRISBANE: There’s no easy way to couch the issue. Captain Rohit Sharma‘s Test career stands at the crossroads in this mid-point of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series. It is imperative for India that he recovers some batting form in the remainder of the series.
The image of a disappointed Rohit trudging back, after yet another cheap dismissal, has been a constant feature since the Adelaide Test. To complicate matters, Rohit has given up his usual batting position. KL Rahul‘s extraordinarily disciplined effort at the Gabba on Tuesday, to back up a match-winning effort in Perth, means the opening slot is now his.
KL Rahul Press Conference
Asking Rahul to give up opening now, just because it was meant to be a stop-gap arrangement, will be unfair on current form and detrimental to the team’s interests.
Rohit, who is above all a team man, must now reshape his approach and technique to suit the middle-order, where he is likely to bat in the immediate future. Having to do so in the heat of a hard-fought series in Australia, complicates matters for the 37-year-old Rohit.
Having joined the team just a few days before the pink-ball Test, Rohit’s poor returns in Adelaide were disruptive but could be explained away. Here, in the third Test, with the team in dire straits, he was expected to rediscover some semblance of his old self on Tuesday.
Instead, counterpart Pat Cummins exposed his frailties, baiting him with a fuller delivery which Rohit, whose footwork was never his strong suit, reached out for and promptly edged to Alex Carey behind the stumps.
When play began, Rohit was yet to open his account and Cummins applied the pressure with three slips, two gullies and a forward short leg. Rohit began well, showed he was amenable to leaving deliveries, and got off the mark against Starc in the next over with a single towards the cover region. Cummins, though, troubled him, in spite of the batter hitting a cracking four behind square off a loose delivery.
Australia’s pacer-captain clearly had a separate plan for Rahul and Rohit. To Rohit he began the next over slightly fuller, bowling in the channel in the good length area, before unleashing a short one down leg which pushed Rohit on the backfoot and deep inside his crease, the batter shaping up for the pull and missing. The third ball was fuller again and Rohit lunged forward, just that the front foot didn’t move further enough to cover the line of the ball. Another loose shot, and out for 10.
Rohit fumed off, throwing his gloves in front of the dugout to fuel some intense social-media speculation. The gloves just lay there in the open, deep into India’s innings, until a member of the support staff picked them up.
It was the sixth time in 12 innings that Cummins had dismissed Rohit, sparking de bate over whether the team, already struggling as a batting unit, could afford to carry him for the remaining two Tests.
Without mentioning Rohit or anyone in particular, Rahul, when asked about the batting unit’s plans for a turnaround, said, “I’m quite certain that everybody has their own set plans. The only thing you can do in the first 30 overs is to tighten up your defence. Try and respect that the first 30 overs is the bowler’s time and give them their time, leave balls, try and play as tight as possible and then really try to cash in once the ball gets older. So that’s my plan, and that’s pretty simple. I’m sure that’s the plan for everybody.”
In Rohit’s case, the numbers tell the story. He is averaging less than 20 (19.66) in his last 9 Tests.
The pressure to score has seemed to scramble his captaincy at times, as Ian Chappell has noted. Ravi Shastri criticized his field placements when Travis Head was on the rampage. The likes of Ricky Ponting and Cheteshwar Pujara have pointed out why Rohit is a natural opener who needs to return to the top of the order.
On Tuesday, Rohit’s gloves, lying there under the gloomy Queensland skies, was a pointer to his troubles.
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