The Indian limited-overs vice-captain and charismatic opener Rohit Sharma is not only an important cog in the wheel for India to win any tournament but also is equally valuable to the team, as Virat Kohli is, in terms of experience.
Rohit Sharma totally rocked the year 2019. He started the year by scoring a magnificent 133 against Australia in Sydney and his form peaked to new heights during the World cup where he scored 5-hundreds and ended up scoring 648 runs at an average of 81.
Adding to the One-day format success, Rohit also led Mumbai Indians to their 4th title win, making them the most successful team in the history of IPL.
And now the hitman is also given the responsibility of opening the batting in Tests and now averages 92 in Tests in 2019 with an average of 88 at Home tests.
T20 Batting Style
Despite all the success and rich-form in Tests and ODI’s, the quality of Rohit Sharma as the team player can be seen in the way he has played in the T20s post the World Cup.
We all know how Rohit Sharma likes to play his game where he loves to set himself in and then likes to go hard in the fag end of the innings. We associate this kind of approach with the Indian T20 team, especially openers, generally termed as a safety-first approach.
However, post the World Cup, Virat had emphasized on changing mindset and had also given importance to playing more freely at the top. This idea could not have been possible without Rohit Sharma who has shown immense maturity in putting his hand-up and has changed his batting behavior for the team.
Rohit Sharma has many batting gears
Rohit Sharma, unlike Dhawan and Rahane, has gears. So, basically playing in the mad zone has never been Sharma’s concern.
For instance, the innings he played at Indore against Sri Lanka. Rohit took 8 balls to score the first 10 runs at a strike rate of 125 before going berserk and scoring 118 off 43 balls at a strike rate of 274 but the issue was off launching from the word go.
The safety-first approach did hamper the team the extra 20 runs against the power-packed teams and, in case the pitch was slow or tough to bat on, India found themselves stuck with no-where to go.
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It was also necessary for Rohit to take up the initiative of scoring quick cameos at the start of the innings if India really had to shed their cautious approach to more gung-ho approach in T20s because the other preferred opener Shikhar Dhawan doesn’t have enough gears to blast oppositions off the attack.
Therefore, after the T20 series against West Indies in July, where he played 2 off the 3 T20s and was dropped for the third T20, there has been conscious effort to take risks early on in the innings especially in the first over.
And since then, Rohit has played 8 T20s with a strike rate of 155, clearly better than his career strike rate of 138 and an average of 26, a little lower than the previous value of 30+. The drop-in average clearly indicates the number of risks he has taken at the start of the innings. He looked more urgent on the crease, playing aggressively from the word go.
However, that doesn’t mean Rohit has had it easy. In the 8 innings mentioned above, he has got out thrice having a strike rate of below hundred. Two of those innings had Rahul at the other end, who clearly has the best strike rate among the openers who tried out to play for India.
But a couple of times Rohit has got off to a start, his 70-80 runs innings were enough to chase a target of 154 in 15.4 overs and score 240 against a power-packed West Indies team.
Clearly, with Rahul as a partner, Rohit not only can start his normal way in the first 5-6 balls but also might just need to give a good 30 odd runs innings coupled with 80-odd runs innings at strike rates of above 150 to provide the new-looked Indian T20 team an impetus to fly.
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