India captain Rohit Sharma has been dropped for the fifth and final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia. The writing was on the cards and it was reported a day prior by TimesofIndia.com.
The axing nudged the ‘Hitman’ closer to retirement – which TimesofIndia.com had reported will come after the Sydney Test. The 37-year-old quit from T20Is last year after lifting the World Cup. He is yet to call time on his ODI career.
Even though Jasprit Bumrah maintained that Rohit had “opted to rest,” the call was a huge one. No Indian captain had ever been dropped mid-series.
“Our captain has shown leadership, he has opted to rest,” said Bumrah at the toss. “It shows the unity we have in the team,” he added in front of a packed arena.
More than the mistakes as a leader, his batting rut had pushed him closer to the exit door and a yet-to-be-official retirement.
Was he alone in proving to be a walking wicket? A liability with the bat? Someone who was hogging spots in the XI for more deserving candidates? Many argued that was the case with Virat Kohli, too, going through a lean patch.
Unlike Rohit, Kohli played the Test in Sydney but his consistency with inconsistency continued. The consistency of falling to deliveries outside-off continued, too. The consistency of perishing with the catch being plucked behind him remained the pattern as well. And, the consistency in being dismissed by Scott Boland did too.
To a delivery that was on fifth-stump line, Kohli pushed hard at a rising delivery, got a thick edge and it flew to Beau Webster who took it neatly. 17 from 69 balls without any boundaries. India, meanwhile, were now four down.
Rohit’s lean patch
Rohit, 37, a white-ball great has looked a pale shadow of himself on this tour, struggling to execute even his bread and butter shots, including the trademark front-foot pull. Time and again, he has struggled to make contact with the ball and when he did, he found a fielder instead of making a fan lucky in the stands.
In the five innings Rohit has played since arriving Down Under, he has mustered just 31 runs at an average of 6.20. His contributions read 3, 6, 10, 3 and 9 while hogging the middle order and then the opening slot.
After the loss in the pink-ball Test, Rohit acknowledged the dismal run. “I have not batted well. There’s no harm in accepting that. But I know what’s in my mind, how I’m preparing myself. All those boxes are very much ticked. It’s just about spending as much time as possible, which I’m pretty sure I’m just there.
The axe might have come down on Rohit for his below-par scores, but the fact is Kohli isn’t doing any better. Since the start of 2024, Kohli, who missed the England series at home, has scored 434 runs at an average of 24.11, which includes one century and one fifty. The century came in India’s win against Australia at Perth.
A deeper look at his record and the picture gets sorrier. His average in the first innings since 2024 is a jaw-droppingly poor 7.00, lower than tailender Bumrah. It is the second-lowest for any batter who has played a minimum of five innings in this period. Only South Africa’s Keshav Maharaj, not a batter either, has fared worse (5.40).
Is there a recency bias involved? Is Kohli being allowed to continue and not Rohit a case of short-term memory coming into play? One can argue, though, that Rohit’s place in the middle and then move up the order hurts the team’s batting order. Score runs and that doesn’t become a problem anyway.
In the current World Test Championship cycle, Rohit has played 17 Tests and scored 864 runs at an average of 28.80, which is also lower than his career number of 40.57. He’s produced three centuries and four fifties in this period.
Kohli, in comparison, is only averaging moderately better with 33.86. The difference, predominantly, lies in the fact that Kohli has produced more runs away from home than Rohit. Is that the difference, too, in Kohli being persisted with?
Whatever the reasoning be for the Indian think tank in staying with Kohli and not Rohit, with both not performing upto their lofty standards, the fact remains that they’re both on the cusp of bowing out from the format. Rohit has already played his last, barring a massive stroke of luck that gets India into the World Test Championship (WTC) final. It won’t be a surprise if Kohli follows suit and Indian cricket can target a transition in the longest format, just as they did after the T20 World Cup.
