India captain Rohit Sharma‘s future as a Test cricketer hangs in the balance following his omission from the team for the recently-concluded Sydney Test against Australia. Reports had claimed that Rohit Sharma was dropped from the team, suggesting that the player is no longer in the selector’s plans for the future.
However, on Day 2 of the match, Rohit Sharma gave an explosive interview to Star Sports, the official broadcaster of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. During the interview, Rohit Sharma suggested that he “isn’t retiring” and said that he decided to “opt-out” of the match owing to poor form. Rohit Sharma ended the series with 31 runs in three matches.
Rohit Sharma’s dismal performance in BGT 2024-25 irked all the experts and fans
The opener has been dismissed in single digits 10 times in the past 15 innings this year and averages 10.93 in the last eight matches. This is the most for a top-seven batter in a season. Virat Kohli has nine single-digit dismissals this season. Under Rohit Sharma, India lost five Tests this season, the most for an Indian captain in a season, a rarity that occurred only under Sachin Tendulkar’s captaincy in 1999-2000.
The 37-year-old’s diminishing reflexes, flaws in his already minimal footwork, finally led him to stand down at Sydney. Rohit Sharma had always been like this, but despite all of it, he was a prolific scorer as well. In 67 Tests, he scored 4,301 runs at an average of 40.57 with 12 centuries. It is his six-hitting skills and an ability to accelerate right from the start, which made him a ‘hitman’, among the Indian cricket fans.
The problem began when runs stopped coming off his bat for the past one year. After a loss in the MCG Test, Rohit accepted that runs were not coming off his bat as the way it should be and it was mentally disturbing. Rohit Sharma’s legacy as a Test captain is that of playing fearless cricket upfront by giving quick starts and forcing results in India’s favour at home.
Having taken over Test captaincy from Virat Kohli in 2021, Rohit Sharma the Mumbaikar discarded the traditional approach to guarded starts in the Tests and chose the ‘attack-first’ game.
Rohit Sharma was prepared to take occasional failures in his stride and said he would back the team going for the kill every time. His insistence on playing the pull shot, a way of countering the short balls, despite getting out several times, is just a reflection of this approach. As a captain and a Test opener, he was successful in rubbing off this approach to the youngsters in the team as well.
Rohit Sharma recently cleared the suspicion on his career, saying he is not retiring from international cricket and decided to sit out of the fifth Test against Australia for the betterment of the team. He also slammed commentators and the journalists for their statements and stories on his future. “I am retiring and a person with a mike and pen is not going to decide about my future,” he told Jatin Sapru. His words were also aimed at Gavaskar.
Sanjay Manjrekar’s stern message to Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir after India’s BGT 2024-25 defeat
Former batter Sanjay Manjrekar criticized India’s decision to not go for specialists in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and instead back players who can contribute a bit with both bat and ball. Manjrekar admitted that the approach worked in the first Test in Perth but added that it harmed India in the long run.
Australia beat India by six wickets in fifth and final Test in Sydney on Sunday, January 5 to clinch the series 3-1. The visitors won the first Test in Perth by 295 runs but were hammered in three of the remaining four Tests.
During an interaction on ESPNCricinfo, Manjrekar opined that the management’s decision to add cushion to their struggling batting line-up meant that the team balance went for a complete toss:
“India were slowly and steadily going away from specialists. The history of Test cricket will tell you that it has never worked. May have worked in one or two games where you have guys more for their secondary skill.”
Asked whether India should review their approach and go back to their tried and tested formula of backing specialists, Manjrekar emphatically replied:
“They should stop dead in their tracks. (Ravindra) Jadeja I can understand, but after that you had a Washington Sundar. You had a Nitish Kumar Reddy, but Jadeja is likely to be more consistent as a batter. India should stop right there and go back to having pure batters and pure bowlers.”
Manjrekar also questioned skipper Rohit Sharma’s role as leader of the team. He said that Rohit should have had a greater say in team selection even if new coach Gautam Gambhir might have had different thoughts:
“Rahul Dravid was a big one on specialists and giving everybody a long rope. Somewhere, the onus was more on Rohit Sharma to continue what has been a winning kind of approach. The captain should have played a stronger role in team selection. More depth India had, more matches they lost eventually.”
With a 3-1 win, Australia regained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after a decade. Pat Cummins and co. also qualified for the World Test Championship final, knocking India and Sri Lanka out of the race.