Better late than never, Rohit Sharma finally arrives to the party

In Hyderabad, Rohit Sharma’s ultra-attacking approach did not come off. 

In Vizag, his defense deserted him. 

So much of Rohit’s success as an opener is down to how impeccably he paces his innings, but somehow, across the first two Tests of this series, the Indian skipper struggled to zero-in on the right tempo. 

Short of runs but not out of touch, Rohit finally put together the pieces on the first day of the third Test in Rajkot today. And the upshot was that he finally arrived at the party, bringing up his 11th Test ton to help India recover from a precarious position.

In the last three years, there’s been a bizarre pattern with Rohit at home, wherein he always gets his eye in but rarely goes on and makes it big. 

Prior to today, in his last 20 innings at home, he’d crossed double digits a remarkable 19 times. Yet only 4 of those 19 knocks turned out to be 50+ scores. Only two of those 50+ scores got converted into hundreds — the 161 in Chennai (2021 vs England) and 120 in Nagpur (2023 vs Australia).

In each of his last five innings at home, he’d gotten his eye in, yet somehow found a way to get himself dismissed. 

Heading into this Test, his last five scores at home read 13, 14, 39, 24 & 35. You can do nothing about dismissals like the one in the second innings in Vizag — cleaned up by an absolute peach by Anderson — but he has, of late, had plenty of ‘avoidable’ dismissals. 

And in line with this particular theme, he almost had a similar ‘avoidable’ dismissal today, batting on 27. Looking to counter-attack after the fall of three early wickets, Rohit, on the final ball of the 13th over, looked to heave Hartley across the on-side. The ball dipped on him, turned sharply, caught the outside edge and was traveling straight to the fielder at first slip. 

However, in what proved to be a moment of huge fortune, Joe Root (at slip) picked up the ball really late and spilt the straightforward chance.  

It was the kind of spill that made you feel that this ‘could’ be Rohit’s day. That luck, for once, was on his side. 

The same became even more obvious on the next ball he faced, as after being given out on-field after being pinned in front of the stumps by Anderson, ultra-edge showed the tiniest of inside-edges. 

Two fortunate breaks in two balls were what was needed to wake up the beast inside Rohit that was napping all series. It finally woke up, and after that, England simply couldn’t control the Indian skipper.

Rohit, the batter in Tests, is unique because he has so many gears to his game. He might have been a tad over-aggressive in the first Test in Hyderabad, but anyone who’s watched him in the last five years knows that hitting sixes is not his only drug in Tests. He is more than capable of grinding it out when the situation demands. 

Today in Rajkot, England were suffocated by two different avatars of Rohit: the counter-attacking one and the one that is determined to survive and score big.

Rohit moved up and down the gears multiple times today, but he truly showcased his versatility as a batter across the first 100 balls he faced. 

India were in a real spot of bother early on at 33/3, losing Jaiswal, Gill and Patidar early, and at this point, Rohit decided that a counter-attack would be the way to go. 19 off 35 balls at one point, Rohit struck at 96.00 across his next 25 balls, smashing a boundary every five balls during this period. 

In the blink of an eye, 33/3 became 71/3, and India had some sort of stability. 

With the early moisture wearing out, the wicket started to ease out too, and it was at this point, that Rohit decided that he would have to stay for the long haul; make his start count and turn it into a big one. 

Remarkably enough, after racing to 43 off his first 60 balls, Rohit’s next 40 balls yielded just 19 runs. England captain Ben Stokes, during this phase, tried to dangle the carrot by having just one fielder stationed in the deep (a very straight long-on) but Rohit showed incredible restraint. 

To the extent that, between overs 20 and 32, he scored just four runs off Tom Hartley in 20 balls, opting to defend 75% of the balls he faced. 

It was only when India had completely recovered from the early collapse that Rohit started loosening up again, playing more freely. He picked up pace eventually, and went at an SR of 78.46 in the latter part of his innings, where he amassed 50 off 65 balls.

Rohit eventually finished with 131 to his name, but you’d think he would be feeling that he left some runs out there in the middle. The pitch had flattened out, and India were in cruise control, but he gave in to the short ball ploy from Stokes and Wood despite very much knowing what was coming his way. Perhaps a double ton was there for the taking had he seen that particular spell from Wood out.

But all said and done, the Indian skipper finally arrived to the party just in time. 

Better late than never.