Kolkata: As long as Rohit Sharma was dismantling bowlers, hitting double hundreds and winning, he couldn’t be faulted for anything. But his relatively underplayed fallibility at home that also flared up in Australia showed that Rohit too is human. Sunday’s spectacular riposte in the Cuttack ODI win over England thus brought relief following growing concern that Rohit was perhaps losing his touch.
The India skipper though was never thinking on those lines. “Look. When people have played for a number of years and scored so many runs over the years – that means something,” he told bcci.tv after India won at the Barabati Stadium. “I’ve played this game for a long time now and I understand what is required of me. So, it’s just about going out and doing your things; and what I did today was one of my things. In my mind, it was just about doing the things that I do, try and bat the way I do.”
Often, a cricketer also has the job of proving people wrong. In his case, it was fraught with risk if one recalls the role Rohit had volunteered for during the 2023 ODI World Cup —setting up India’s innings with belligerent starts. So committed to the cause was Rohit that he didn’t waver from it even in the final, hammering a 31-ball 47 on a day India ended with just 240 on the board. It was thus natural for him to feel let down when the same approach was castigated once it started yielding duds.
As a batter ages, the more fixated he becomes with a certain process of scoring. But Rohit keeps recalibrating, without showing off. Improving on the same shot that brought about his downfall in the Nagpur ODI for his first six on Sunday was a statement in itself. And when he started clearing his front leg to explore familiar vectors, all doubts had ceased.
That’s the thing with Rohit. Just when he seems to slow down to a halt, he finds a way to show he isn’t done. Proof is the 22 ODI hundreds he has scored since he turned 30, the most by any batter now, and all as opener. Sixes were his trusted ally once again, taking him past Chris Gayle’s record tally of 331, with only Shahid Afridi’s 351 ahead of him. In an age where white-ball openers hardly last an entire season, Rohit looks set to become the quickest to reach 11,000 ODI runs (he needs 13 more). He may have missed out on many hundreds on the way but that’s a trade-off Rohit had happily agreed to two years back.
Why? Call it maturity, or an act of selflessness few are capable of these days. Rohit had chosen to answer the calling, required to help India break new ground. Having taken on this role, knowing full well its advantages and disadvantages, he isn’t wrong in believing he knows best how to get the job done.
“Like I said, I have been here long enough, so one or two knocks is not going to change my mind. Just another day in the office. We need to do our job, and our job is to just go out there and play the game. As long as you go out there and you know that when you go to bed, you have given your best. That is what matters. Every time I walk on to the pitch, I walk on to play the game, I want to try and do well.”
What was perhaps forgotten down the line was how easy it is for Rohit to just play the waiting game and churn out hundreds at will. Instead, he had embraced the risk of chasing forties and fifties in double quick time. “Sometimes it happens, sometimes it may not happen. As long as I am clear what I want to do, that’s all that matters, nothing else. When you have scored so many runs, you have done something, right? You just need to get back to that.”
To scale down that belligerent approach was thus an easy recourse, and probably a rare selfish act from Rohit. It was necessary too, courtesy the spiralling number of questions about his form, and his captaincy by extension. For a change, he needed to accumulate to stay in control. “That mindset of how to get runs, how to score runs. It sounds very simple, but it is quite difficult. But in my mind, it was just about enjoying. And that is what we play the sport for, to enjoy the game more than anything else.” As long as Rohit stays in that mode, trust him to continue bending games at will.
