Inside out | Australia series is Rohit Sharma's moment of reckoning in unfulfilled Test career

Rohit Sharma has made yet another comeback in the Test team and once again, the right hander’s return to the side and playing XI has created a bit of buzz regarding the handling of players by the Indian team management. 

That Rohit is a gifted cricketer is an argument that has been used repetitively to defend the backing he has got from the Indian team management under different captains. But he could not nail down his spot in the squad until the promotion to the top order, in a fashion similar to his white-ball career where he started coming into his own with his eye-catching strokes and big hundreds. 

Rohit played his last Test against Bangladesh in 2019 in India, and in that home season, he was sizzling with the bat and scored daddy hundreds at the top of the order to deflate the opposition teams. All looked settled for both him and the team at the top of the order. But, another hiccup occurred on the tour of New Zealand and he could not play the Test series against New Zealand. 

When Rohit was smashing the likes of Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje on Indian pitches, there was a sense of awe about him and the Rohit Sharma the world had expected was finally arriving on the big stage in the longest format. But deep down, there must be a thought among all pundits and fans that bigger tests were awaiting overseas, to examine him on the basis of skills and technique for combating and dominating pacers on foreign soils.

 In this regard, the absence in New Zealand could not quite give him the chance to stamp his authority on the team and establish his position among the other contenders for the opening slot.

What made matters worse were the events that followed the New Zealand tour as India were starved off any cricket for months and when the Indian Premier League started, Rohit defied all odds of rustiness and looked set to grab the opportunity that was to follow in Australia.

However, an episode of serious miscommunication happened in which Rohit looked like preferring playing for his franchise Mumbai Indians in IPL, instead of looking beyond the spectacle of the cash-rich league and subsequently jeopardizing his chances to play in Australia.

Rohit Sharma’s career has been marred by injuries at perfectly wrong times. He was all set to replace an injured VVS Laxman in Nagpur way back in 2010, but he ended up injuring his ankle playing football in the warm-up session before the toss and the rise of other batsmen such as Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, and Cheteshwar Pujara around him meant that he got the chance to break into the playing XI only at the number six position, below the likes of other younger batsmen in 2013.

He announced his arrival on the big stage in a grand fashion, hitting two back to back centuries against West Indies, but failed miserably in the stern examination taken by Dale Steyn and company in South Africa. On the next overseas tour to New Zealand, Rohit could score one fifty in four innings but was again guilty of throwing away his starts while his partners in Kohli and Rahane notched up centuries to never stay out of the contention.

His rising stocks in the early part of his career started tanking by the tour of England in 2014. But when India gave up the idea of playing Stuart Binny as the fifth bowler, Rohit was inducted back as the sixth frontline batsman in the line up in Southampton. But the match turned out to be an infuriating one for both Rohit and the team management. He was persisted within the team on the tour of Australia that followed the same year, but runs did not come and whenever he got off to a good start, he was guilty of throwing it away in signs of not being a batsman who was willing to wait for his time.

Meanwhile, he kept on performing in Tests played in India, but his away numbers never improved. On the back of strong numbers in home Tests, and due to Ajinkya Rahane’s horrible run of form in that phase, Rohit was promoted as one of the five batsmen in the team on the tour of South Africa where his great unravelling as a Test batsman began five years ago. He failed with the bat in both the Tests, and it forced the team management to come back to the seven-four combination. The emergence of an all-rounder in Hardik Pandya meant that there was no place left for Rohit in the team and he was subsequently dropped from the side for the tour of England.

However fragile his body and inconsistency with the bat have been over the years, he never dropped out of the radar of the team management and it underlines the trust and confidence he enjoys among the leadership group.

When the BCCI announced the replacement for Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Shami before the third Test at the SCG, Rohit’s name was suffixed with the vice-captain tag, which in many ways was a massive revelation about the place of Rohit in this team set up.

Before Rohit’s arrival, it was Pujara who was the deputy to Ajinkya Rahane, the captain leading the side in absence of Virat Kohli. This long thread of vice-captains shows nothing but the standing of players among the Indian team management. It now shows that Rohit is rated very highly, in fact, maybe more than Cheteshwar Pujara who has been one of the mainstays of the Indian batting line-up, and it was more than certain that he would walk back into the Test team for the SCG Test.

The remaining two Tests will be followed by nine Test matches against England at home and away and he would be itching to make his mark in the upcoming two Tests to silence the critics and stake a full and final claim on one of the opener’s positions in the batting order. Rohit would know that these two Tests will serve as a litmus test of his batting in overseas conditions and that the four Tests against England back home is a kind of territory he has already dominated against South Africa. If he wants to seal a spot for himself on the tour of England in the summer later this year, the time to put his head down and pile on the runs is now, when the pace trio of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, and Josh Hazlewood is all in readiness to test all aspects of his batting with the new ball having curtailed the careers of two openers in Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal in two Test matches ripping up the vulnerabilities in their technique, and Rohit should not expect any sense of relief from them at the SCG.

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