Team India captain Rohit Sharma gave an unexpected interview to the broadcasters during the ongoing New Year’s Test match against Australia.
Speaking during the Lunch break on Day 2 from the Sydney Cricket Ground, Sharma addressed a host of issues that had been plaguing the Indian team in the lead-up to the final Test match of the 2024/25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
Captain Sharma promptly shut down the speculation about him getting dropped from the SCG game and whether Melbourne was the final Test match of his career.
In his candid interview, the 37-year-old opener said:
“Basically, the chat that I had with the coach and the selector was very simple: I am not scoring runs, I am not in form, it’s an important match, anyways the batting unit is struggling a bit. So, you can’t carry a lot of out-of-form players in the team. It was as simple as this and it was going in my mind. I was keen on telling this to the coach and the selector, I told them, they backed my decision.”
The Indian skipper further added:
“Look, like I said, this decision is not a retirement decision. Nor am I going to step away from the game. I am out of this game because I am not getting runs. There’s no guarantee that I won’t be scoring runs five months later. We have seen a lot in cricket, every minute, every second, every moment, life changes.
“I am confident things will change. At the same time, I have to be realistic as well. At the same time, some person is sitting with a mic, laptop or a pen and writing stuff, our lives do not change because of what that person is writing or saying.
“We have seen the game for so many years. These people can’t decide when we have to go, when we can’t play, and when we can’t captain the side. I am a sensible person, a mature person, and father of two children. I have enough sense to understand what I want in life.”
When Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli announced their international retirement from T20I cricket together in June last year, India were at the top of the world, having just won the T20 World Cup. How things have changed in the last six months for the stalwarts of Indian cricket as they stand at the crossroads of their Test career staring down the barrel.
The Team India captain had a dreadful 2024 in Test cricket. In 14 Tests (26 innings), he scored 620 runs at an average of 24.76, hitting two centuries and a half-century. Moreover, taking the five-Test home series against England out of the equation, where his two centuries came, Sharma scored just 220 runs in 17 innings at an average of 12.94. His last Test fifty came in the second innings of the first Test against New Zealand—a series India lost 0-3, which was the first time they lost three straight Tests at home.
With scores of 3, 6, 10, 3, and 9 from five innings in this tour, Sharma has scored 31 runs at an average of 6.2—the lowest batting average for a touring captain in a Test series in Australia (minimum five innings).
It’s not just the low scores that are glaring, but the manner in which he has been dismissed as well. There’s no clear pattern to Sharma’s dismissals except for the fact that he looks like a walking wicket whenever he comes on to bat.
His poor form with the bat has had an adverse impact on his captaincy too. With the defeat at the MCG, Sharma registered his sixth loss as Team India captain in a calendar year, second only to Kohli himself (7).
However, partly responsible for India’s dismal showing is also the poor form of their other batting mainstay, Kohli, who from 11 Tests (21 innings) has scored 446 runs at an average of 21.23, with one hundred and one fifty. That one century was the unbeaten 100 he scored in the first Test in Perth, the match that India won by 295 runs.
If we take out that hundred, then the former India skipper has scores of 5, 7, 11, 3, 36, 5, 17, and 6—90 runs in eight innings at an average of 11.25 on this tour.
And all of Kohli’s dismissals in this series have come chasing deliveries outside the off-stump and getting caught behind either by the keeper or in the slips. These repeated dismissals reflect the pressure Kohli is under to score, and he is resorting to scoring off deliveries that he would normally leave, resulting in more risky shots and edges.
When a batter is out of form and gets caught behind, the dismissal often reflects deeper technical and mental challenges caused by lack of confidence. While in Kohli’s case there seems to be some technical frailties that have crept into his game, in Sharma’s case, the fight seems to be in his head.
There is no doubt that both these veterans, in the twilight of their careers, are out of form, but having guided the Indian ship for over a decade now, I feel both of them still have a lot to offer to Indian cricket at least for a couple more years.
Team India are currently in transition and at a crucial juncture. There are reports that the selectors may look for a fresh start, though that will still require a mix of young talent alongside a core of experienced players for the evolving demands of modern Test cricket.
Like Rohit Sharma said: “I am not going anywhere!” And for the sake of Indian cricket, we don’t want two of our greatest players pushed out the door on the back of just one bad year.
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