Shamik Chakrabarty, Mumbai
Rohit Sharma looked fitter, leaner and dapper at the CEAT Awards on Tuesday. In the evening, he was suited and booted. A few hours previously, from mid-morning to early afternoon, he was in his training kit, sweating it out at a private facility.
The former India captain hit the nets at Reliance Corporate Park in Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai, yesterday and from 10.30 am to 1.30 pm, he trained hard, it is learnt. Around eight to 10 bowlers were present to bowl at the nets. Rohit himself arranged for them through the coaches from different clubs in the Mumbai maidans. Mumbai Indians physio Amit Dube, too, was there, monitoring the entire training session.
Someone in the know said that Rohit’s practice was mainly centred around facing the short deliveries and playing horizontal-bat shots. Obviously it was done keeping in mind the extra bounce on Australian pitches. India will play three ODIs Down Under from October 19 to 25, and Rohit, along with the newly-appointed captain Shubman Gill, is the team’s first-choice opener, while Yashasvi Jaiswal is the back-up.
Rohit, who is done with Tests and T20Is, is a bonafide legend in 50-over cricket with 11,168 runs, including 32 hundreds, at 48.76 from 273 matches. His last ODI outing saw him score a match-winning 76 off 83 balls and walk away with the Player-of-the-Match award. That was the Champions Trophy final against New Zealand on March 9. Apparently, he has nothing to prove to anyone. And yet, it feels weird that just seven months down the line, he is going to a series to prove a point.
Only a few days ago, Rohit was stripped of ODI captaincy with Gill replacing him. At the team selection press conference, chief selector Ajit Agarkar explained the decision. “Firstly, it’s practically impossible to have three different captains for three formats,” he told reporters. “Just in terms of planning… Obviously, at some stage, you have got to start looking at where the next World Cup is. It’s also a format which is played the least now. So you don’t get that many games to actually give the next guy, or if there is going to be another guy, that much time to prepare himself or plan.”
The chief selector talked logic. By the time the next 50-over World Cup comes, in 2027, Rohit would be 40 years old. And once the selection committee decided to move on from him as the captain, it was imperative that the “next guy” be given adequate time to bed in. India will play about 20 ODIs over the next two years before the next World Cup, and Gill is unlikely to feature in all of them to manage his workload. He needs time to build the team in his own image.
As for Rohit, and also Virat Kohli, he would now be assessed on a series-to-series basis. Also, as Agarkar hinted, if he wants to continue his international career beyond the Australia tour, Rohit will have to turn up for domestic cricket. Grapevine has it that the two superstars refused to play the ‘A’ series between India and Australia, and it didn’t go down well with the selection committee and the team management.
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