After starting with a tremendous flourish in the first month of IPL, Rohit Sharma’s returns have been extraordinarily poor of late.
Maybe his heart is no longer in the IPL. Maybe he is already plotting and planning for the T20 World Cup, starting in a fortnight’s time. Maybe the events of the last several months surrounding the contentious leadership change in his franchise are taking their toll. Whatever the reason, Rohit Sharma has gone spectacularly off the boil over the last 25 days, sparking a little frisson of concern with the mega event just round the corner.
Mumbai Indians’ Rohit Sharma(AFP)
On the face of it, India’s captain hasn’t had a terrible IPL – 349 runs in 13 innings, average 29.08, strike-rate 145.41. It’s the most runs he has made in a single edition of the tournament since 2021; his rate of scoring is also the fastest since the inaugural season in 2008, when he scored 147.98 per 100 balls faced. But, like in most cases, statistics only tell us half the tale.
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After starting with a tremendous flourish in the first month, Rohit’s returns have been extraordinarily poor. In what has been a season of two starkly contrasting halves, 297 runs in his first seven innings have been followed by a measly 52 in the last six. Four single-digit scores and a highest of 19, a tortured, laboured, unedifying 24-ball stay at the Eden Gardens last Saturday, testify to unalloyed struggles. More than the lack of runs, Rohit hasn’t looked ‘in the mood’, if you like, which has translated into addled shot-selection early in the piece in his seemingly hesitant bid to impose himself on the bowling.
Rohit’s dramatic dip in form, coupled with Yashasvi Jaiswal’s sustained travails – nearly half of his 348 runs have come in two innings alone – means two of India’s three potential openers (the third being Virat Kohli) carry little confidence or momentum into the World Cup. Of course, it’s more than likely that Jaiswal will warm the bench in the interests of balance and India will open with Rohit and Kohli, who has been in sensational touch throughout the competition and is the runaway leader in the race for the Orange Cap. But it’s imperative for the team’s sake, and perhaps more importantly for his own sake, that Rohit shakes off this lean trot and hits the ground running when India begin their World Cup campaign, against Ireland in New York on June 5.
The captain’s influence in India’s blazing run at the 50-over home World Cup in October and November is too fresh in memory to bear detailed recall. Suffice to say that the tempo he provided drove oppositions to the defensive, allowing the likes of Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya (until his injury) and Ravindra Jadeja to sustain unfettered aggression. Even in the final which India surrendered to Australia by six wickets, Rohit provided the customary fiery opening salvo with a 31-ball 47; his dismissal in the tenth over sucked the fluency out of the Indian batting and eventually led to their being bowled out for 240, singularly insufficient as it turned out.
India need Rohit focused and firing at the World Cup. The expectation is that at most venues in the US and the Caribbean, the pitches will be on the slower side, magnifying the import of frenetic starts against the new ball. India need Rohit the enforcer of the 50-over World Cup to re-emerge when they hit the Americas. There is no greater spur for a team than its captain leading by example, something Rohit has done exemplarily in his two years at the helm.
While he has maintained a stoic silence and tried to hide behind thin humour whenever the topic has surfaced, it’s no secret that Rohit hasn’t taken too kindly to the manner in which he was displaced as the captain of a franchise whom he led to five IPL titles. Back in the blue of India in what is certain to be his last T20 World Cup, none of that lingering, residual, bitter aftertaste will be an unwelcome companion. Rohit has one final game, at his beloved Wankhede against Lucknow Super Giants on Friday, to work his way back among the runs before he emplanes with several of his teammates – from eliminated franchises – sometime next week for the Americas. Meaningful runs won’t hurt, and no one is more acutely aware of that than Rohit himself.
Come the World Cup, though, and one can be guaranteed a switched-on, driven Rohit. Back in charge, he won’t need reminding that as the leader, he must take the bull by the horns. This extended trough is a niggling worry, sure. The onus is on Rohit to ensure that that’s all it remains.
