Image Credit- BCCI
Rohit Sharma’s 50th
Test match occurred in the World Test Championship final the previous year. In
that particular game, he was the fifth most experienced player among India’s
top seven.
After nine Tests, Rohit became the second most experienced member of India’s
top seven, after the Dharamsala Test concluded on Saturday. Rohit had played in
59 Tests overall.
From a batting
standpoint, this series was all about the fresh and sort of new faces for
India. After Sunil Gavaskar, Yashasvi Jaiswal is the first Indian batsman to
score more than 700 runs in a series. Shubman Gill reached adulthood. Dhruv
Jurel, Devdutt Padikkal, and Sarfaraz Khan all made outstanding first
impressions. Even Rajat Patidar, the one debutante who failed to completely
make an impression, had a string of bad luck bad enough to make headlines.
It is not necessary
to pay much attention to that average in a series that is primarily
batting-friendly. Notably, however, he batted at a strike rate of 64.20 in the
first 10 overs of his innings, trailing just Sarfaraz and Jaiswal among Indian
batsmen. That is faster than both Crawley (68.72) and Jaiswal (63.09), but not
as fast as Ben Duckett (81.10) in that phase.
Although it wasn’t quite as aggressive as Rohit had used in the opening
powerplay of the ODI World Cup last year, it was still very similar to it when
playing with the red ball.
It made a statement
on the predicaments India was in and Rohit’s gut feelings in them. Return to
India’s abortive attempt to reach 231 in Hyderabad. During that fourth innings,
there were moments when the Indian batsmen appeared to withdraw into their shells,
showing no sign of trying to disrupt the lengths of the England spinners.
The exception was Rohit, who amassed 39 off 58 balls and scored back-to-back
reverse-swept fours off Jack Leach in addition to numerous excursions down the
pitch and sweeps.
Throughout the
entire series, this was Rohit’s method. He counterattacked after India had been
reduced to 33 for 3 on the first morning in Rajkot. Fortunately, this time, he
had good fortune as Joe Root dropped an edged slog off Tom Hartley when he was
on 27. After reaching his half-century in 71 balls, he finished with 131 off
196.
Perhaps only once in this series did India establish and maintain a commanding
lead at Dharamsala, coinciding with a lengthy Rohit innings. It was his most
basic innings, in a sense, the product of batting in favourable conditions for
a while and wearing down a less formidable opposition.
Prior to that,
Ranchi gave India a fourth-innings chase that was just as difficult as the one
in Hyderabad, and Rohit set it up pretty much the same way, constantly
utilising his feet to reduce the possibility of being leg before wicket and
interfering with England’s spinners’ lengths, which may have contributed to the
barrage of full-tosses they sent down. There were also daring strokes against
pace, most famously a pick-up for six off a good-length ball from James
Anderson over wide long-on.
When Rohit let his guard down against Hartley, the arrogance appeared to reach
an almost unheard-of degree.
Rohit’s ability to
fool the audience into believing he’s pulling off a heist when he’s actually
just being forgetful comes from his demonstrated flexibility in the past.
In a series when he was supposed to captain one of the least experienced
batting lineups India had ever picked, Rohit faced yet another varied set of
obstacles. Don’t allow the fact that he handled them in the way we’ve come to
anticipate deceive you into believing that what he did was standard.