Rohit Sharma outlasts the selector who wanted him gone, but runs must follow

Before the third ODI at Lord's in July, the selectors told Rohit Sharma that they were looking beyond him for the 2027 World Cup and that Lord’s could be his last game, this newspaper reported at the time. They gave him the option of announcing his retirement.

Rohit didn’t. Instead, back-alley parleys within the board reportedly ended with Ajit Agarkar, the chairman of selectors, choosing not to seek renewal of his contract. Agarkar had bravely led the phasing out of Kohli and Rohit from Tests.

In white-ball cricket, he was stumped on the last lap. Whether by design or not, Rohit is the reason the man who wanted him out is gone. Now he has to score runs to justify it, and to show that holding on was worth the fight.

Every failure overseas is now louder for that. Had the World Cup been in India or the subcontinent, one suspects the selectors wouldn’t have been so intent on replacing him. It’s his performances overseas that will be keenly watched.

And the problem, as the first ODI in New Zealand showed, is the urge to hit out at the last instant. In England, in July, he had two failures before he hit a hundred in the last game. So far in New Zealand, he has had three failures in three innings, and it won’t be a surprise if he does well again in the last game of the series.

Since the end of his Test career, Rohit has worked hard on his fitness and played domestic cricket to stay competitive. Still, an ODI series comes after long intervals, and he takes time to get going. England was like that.

So is this. His dismissal in the first ODI would have hurt him. He had fielded first and seen the two-paced pitch. The one shot he had to avoid early on was hitting on the up. And yet he went for it, only to spoon it to mid-off.

In the second game, an ill-advised swipe did him in after a while of patience. In Friday’s game, a ball that straightened on off and middle squared him up completely, though it was a decent first ball, for a batsman as tentative as Rohit was.

Overseas, it comes down to patience early in the knock. He would do best to react to the demands of the ball rather than impose his whims on it, but white-ball cricket has moved on from that for a while now. What he certainly can’t afford is to let any last-instant urge take over.

The decision to attack, or not, has to be made consciously, before the ball is bowled. That is predetermination, a skill he has cultivated in his recent white-ball game. Even Gary Kirsten, India’s former coach, once told this newspaper about the need for predetermination.

“You take a chance that the bowler is going to do something different and you set up yourself for a predetermined event.” Rohit has been pulling off this predetermination more successfully than most. It was his calling card from the 2023 ODI World Cup, when he almost singlehandedly dragged India to the modern style of all-out attack.

It’s just that he has aged since, the gaps between his India games are longer, and that instinct seems to have been tamed a touch. He doesn’t commit to it as fully as he once did. The problem Indian cricket now faces is that, by not blooding in Rohit’s alternatives, time is running out.

Someone like Yashasvi Jaiswal, the Test opener better suited in theory to new-ball movement, hasn't had enough chances. With the time left for the World Cup, India are most likely to persist with Rohit, and that may be no bad thing.

He has the experience and a most intense desire to win the ODI cup. He has worked things out on his own before, be it abandoning his tendency to ground the bat at the crease to instead keep it in the air as the bowler runs in, as close to his hips as possible.

He once told this newspaper: “The Sri Lanka tour in 2012 was the worst tour of my career. … I also saw videos of batsmen who had scored more than 10,000 runs and compared my technique.” The fix this time is in the head, and the clock is running.

1st ODI, Edgbaston: 11 (21) 2nd ODI, Cardiff: 26 (47) 3rd ODI, Lord’s: 138 (110) 1st ODI, Auckland: 0 (6) 2nd ODI, Wellington: 23 (28) 3rd ODI, Hamilton: did not bat (washed out) 4th ODI, Mount Maunganui: 0 (1) Total so far: 23 runs in 3 innings, average 7.67s Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more.

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