Opinion
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| | Respect Rohit’s flair & flamboyance! | | | The Caribbean islands have easily been the luckiest for him so far, but he has unexpectedly struggled in Sri Lanka. The recently concluded five-match ODI series there has undoubtedly been the most disastrous for a player of Rohit Sharma’s calibre, who is arguably the most talented in the current crop of Indian cricketers. Rohit made his one day international debut in June, 2007. During his limited career, spanned over five years now, he has seen both sides of the coin: ups and downs; success and failure; fame and shame, and now Rohit is possibly under the radar of ruthless selectors. Will he survive is the big question?
No one actually doubts his ability, potential, flamboyance, skill, talent and technique. But inconsistency has threatened to mar his career. Akash Chopra, the former India player, writes in his recent column that Rohit comfortably succeeds in ticking the two out of three ‘T’s’ (Talent, Technique and Temperament) required to become a complete batsman. He has talent in abundance and the right technique to succeed at the highest level, but the last ‘T’ that of temperament is an area of serious concern. One of Rohit’s biggest strength is his ability to play fast bowling with so much of ease. Rohit often reminds us of Inzamam-ul-Haq’s lazy elegance. During the tri-nation ODI tournament earlier this year on the tour Down Under he didn’t score many runs in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. But he showed glimpses of what he could do. I remember him pulling the young Australian left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Starc for a breathtaking six. In recent memory it was perhaps the best pull shot I had ever watched live on television since 2000. It was so very pleasing on the eye.
More often than not, this lad from Nagpur, Maharashtra looks so graceful while batting. In the lucrative Indian Premier League [IPL] he is promoted as a brand. The success of the Mumbai Indians—the team that he plays for in the IPL—largely depends on how good Rohit’s form is.
At a healthy strike rate of 80 per 100 balls and average close to 32, Rohit has scored almost 2,000 runs in 84 ODIs. He has scored two hundreds, one each against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka in Bulawayo, and 12 fifties overall. Apart from his back-to-back hundreds in Zimbabwe in 2010, the major highlight of his career in the 50-overs format so far has been his consistent performances on the tour of West Indies, in mid-2011, where he scored 257 runs, which included three fifties, in the five-match series at an average of 128.5. He was dismissed only twice. This rightly won him the Player of the Series award. Then again, in end-2001, Rohit won the Player of the Series against the same side; this time in the home series. He scored 305 runs, which again included three fifties, at a healthy average of 76.
Now his scores in the first four matches of the one day series in Sri Lanka read: 5, 0, 0 and 4. Obviously, this is not what Rohit’s fans want to see. Neither will the selection committee members be pleased with these inconsistent scores.
Adjectives often fail me while describing Rohit. One is lured to use superlatives for him. He is hugely talented, yet inconsistent. He is technically so well-equipped; his timing impeccable; and his style so elegant, yet at times he throws his wicket away. His skill of finding gaps almost at will is a unique gift.
His detractors might argue that incredible Virat Kohli has scored close to 3900 runs—13 hundreds and 21 fifties at an average of 52— in almost as many one day games that Rohit has played in. In his last 10 ODIs Kohli has scored 850 runs at an average of 106.25, which by the way is a new feat; a world record. This feat includes five centuries—four against Sri Lanka and one versus Pakistan— and two fifties. Imagine, no other cricketer has ever achieved this feat in the history of the game. Neither Brian Lara nor Sachin Tendulkar! Thirteen tons in only 89 games. Kohli seems to have developed this habit of scoring centuries one after another, as if having a routine breakfast.
Amazing talent!! But to expect every player to be as magnificently consistent as Laras, Sachins, Kallises, Pontings and even Kohlis would be way off the mark. I am not trying to draw any parallels between Kohli and Lara, because the former has not proved himself in the longer format of cricket as yet.
Marvan Atapattu—the former Sri Lanka captain— scored five ducks in his first six test innings, but we all know what he did later. Visionary Sri Lankan selectors persisted with him and believed in his aptitude. Some might say that Sri Lanka do not have the luxury of dropping players in haste because of limited pool of talent. But that’s not a sound argument. Atapattu didn’t disappoint. The guy went on to score more than 14,000 international runs which include 27 centuries in both forms of the game, and five double hundreds in test cricket. May be the Indian selectors can take a leaf out from the Lankan selectors’ book and choose to persist with Rohit. Well, it remains a bitter fact that Rohit’s inconsistency cost him his place in the World Cup 2011 squad. But it would be grossly unfair if selectors drop him for one poor series in Sri Lanka. A player of his panache deserves a long run. His flair and flamboyance deserve respect!
*(The columnist is a professional writer, journalist with international experience. He can be reached at gowhargeelani@gmail.com) |
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