The clock may be ticking, but Rohit Sharma can still bend time and space to his will in ODI cricket
Karthik Krishnaswamy09-Mar-20252:23
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Time. Rohit Sharma has always had time. More of it than most.There was a shot he played in Sunday’s Champions Trophy final that was all about time, off Will O’Rourke in the second over of India’s run-chase. This was a drive, on the up, and he moved so little yet was in position so early that time seemed to stop momentarily before his bat came down and spanked the ball between cover and mid-off.This shot grappled with time in another way too. It turned the clock back, because this was perhaps the defining shot – along with the pull, always the pull – of the early versions of Rohit. Those versions were all about stillness, minimalism, and the bat tracing arcs of aching purity.Rohit still plays shots of that kind, but isn’t defined by them in quite the same way. The shots that define him now are like the one he played four overs later, off Nathan Smith, when he stepped out, exposed all his stumps, and swatted a waist-high ball 92 metres over wide long-on. This Rohit is just as effortless as the early Rohit, but that cricketing cliché of lazy elegance no longer fits as comfortably; this latter-day effortlessness has an ursine muscularity to it.Related
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This has always been part of his game too – it’s not for nothing that he has hit more sixes in ODIs than anyone other than Shahid Afridi – but it has only recently become its central feature. In ODIs involving Shubman Gill, his current opening partner, Rohit has faced 539 balls in the first five overs of innings, and hit 28 of them for sixes. He faced 1726 balls in the first five overs in ODIs involving Shikhar Dhawan, his other great opening partner, and hit just 20 sixes.So many Rohits, over so much time, and all that time has run parallel in three different formats, with one bifurcated into international and franchise versions, all this severely complicating the movement of the clock.Exactly a month before this Champions Trophy final against New Zealand, Rohit had turned the clock back in another way with a blistering century against England in Cuttack. By one measure, he hadn’t turned the clock back all that far: this was only his third ODI innings since scoring back-to-back fifties on turning tracks in Sri Lanka.But, in other ways, the hands had moved an immeasurable distance in the intervening months – to the extent that he had had to sit out a Test match while fully fit and India’s captain to boot. To the extent that when India announced their Champions Trophy squad, ESPNcricinfo put the words “Rohit Sharma keeps his spot as captain” in its headline, and had solid journalistic reasons to highlight that fact.Rohit Sharma has always had a lot of time, but the question of how much remains has shadowed him relentlessly through these recent months. As you watched him bat on Sunday, then, and watched the gap between his sixes and Afridi’s sixes narrow, you may well have wondered: could this final be the final act not just of this tournament, but, you know…?Rohit Sharma went after the New Zealand seamers in the first powerplay•AFP/Getty ImagesUntil this final, Rohit had experienced a strange sort of Champions Trophy with the bat: 104 runs at an average of 26.00, with a top score of 44, but those runs had come at a strike rate of 107.21, and all of them had come in the first ten overs, which meant he had scored more runs than anyone else in this phase. This was the latter-day ODI version of Rohit taken to its logical extreme: a first-powerplay basher to the exclusion of anything else. His quick early scoring was giving his opening partner space and time to get his eye in, and having a knock-on effect on later stages of India’s innings, but at a certain cost to his own returns.”Using my feet to seamers is something I’ve been doing for a long time now. It’s just about being clear in my mind,” Rohit said after the match, when asked about his approach at the start of the innings. “I was very clear how I wanted to execute in the first five-six overs, I’ve gotten out doing that as well, but I never wanted to look away from that. The result is obviously not going to be consistent in what I’m trying to achieve, but as long as it serves the purpose of the team, serves the purpose of what we’re trying to do, I’m happy with that.”It was clearly serving its purpose. It had contributed significantly to India getting to the finals of three successive ICC white-ball tournaments and, coming into Sunday’s game, having won 22 out of 23 matches in those tournaments.Having been at the helm through all that, though, was this…? He has already retired from T20Is, and he will be 39 when the next ODI World Cup rolls around, so surely…?All these ellipses charged every moment of this Rohit innings with extra significance. If some of his shots turned the clock back, they also reminded you that time only really moves in one direction. How many more times will you watch that pull again, or that flat-bat slap past point, or that fine sweep off the fast bowler, so effective yet so rarely spoken about?
Until the final, Rohit had experienced a strange sort of Champions Trophy: 104 runs at an average of 26.00, with a top score of 44 and a strike rate of 107.21 – and all of them had come in the first 10 overs, which meant he had scored more runs than anyone else in this phase
As the match ticked on, the competitive significance of all this grew increasingly clear. India were chasing 252, not a massive target, but it was critical that they chased down a big chunk of it when the ball was new and the fast bowlers were in operation. New Zealand’s innings had illustrated what the conditions were like in an almost cartoonish way – they scored 104 for 1 in 12 overs from the fast bowlers, and 144 for 5 from the 38 overs delivered by India’s spin quartet; even if they didn’t have the same quality of spin at their disposal, things were going to be different when the first powerplay ended and the fields spread.India were 64 for no loss at the ten-over mark, with Rohit on 49 off 40. The first part of his job was done.What remained was another turning back of the clock: this was the first time in the tournament that Rohit was batting outside the first powerplay, the first time he was having to bat in a middle-overs way. He brought up his first fifty of the tournament off his first ball in that phase, with a single off a checked, front-foot drive to sweeper cover off Mitchell Santner.It was a blast – if that word can describe something so gentle – from the past, and more of these came over the next few overs as New Zealand plugged away with spin: front-foot clips into the on side, forays into the deepest recesses of the crease for back-foot punches down the ground. It was all so smooth and meditative – until New Zealand sent back Gill in the 19th over, and within minutes Virat Kohli too.India now needed 146 from 185; Rohit was batting on 69 off 63. How would he approach this? This was territory Rohit had navigated expertly on so many occasions in the past, but, jeez, when was the last time?A hush fell over proceedings. New Zealand’s quartet of spinners are not as threatening as India’s under normal circumstances, but this Dubai pitch had consistently given spinners more help in the second innings than the first through the tournament, and they were extracting 3.4 degrees of spin from this surface when India had only managed 2.0 degrees. They now subjected Rohit and Shreyas Iyer to the quietest phase of India’s innings: 16 runs in 41 balls.Gautam Gambhir congratulates Rohit after victory was secured•ICC via Getty ImagesThen Rohit, having scored 7 off 21 in this phase and having seen his strike rate drop below 100 for the first time in what must have felt like months, tried to do the Rohit thing. He perhaps stepped out a fraction early, early enough for Rachin Ravindra to pull back his length, widen his line, and turn the ball away from his hitting arc as he aimed high and long down the ground.Rohit Sharma st Latham b Ravindra 76. Was it the, you know…?The answer, for now, is a categorical no. “I’m not going to retire from this format,” he said in his post-match press conference, “just to make sure that no rumours are spread going forward.”Not the end, then. Not yet.But what an innings, and what came after it also bore Rohit’s stamp. Between them, Iyer, Axar Patel, KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya hit five more sixes, and four of them were dismissed while looking to hit boundaries. India, though, bat down to No. 8, and they trust that depth. That depth came good in the end, with Ravindra Jadeja, their No. 8, hitting the winning boundary with an over to spare.This hasn’t always been the case through India’s glory run of 23 wins in 24 matches across three big white-ball tournaments. A lack of depth, forced by an untimely injury to their key seam-bowling allrounder, contributed significantly to the one defeat during that run, and that one defeat, to many of these players, will remain a sore spot that the 23 wins can only do so much to alleviate.But that defeat forced India to find ways to better themselves, and they strove to become a team that could call upon six genuine bowling options while batting down to No. 8 on most occasions. The apotheosis came on Sunday, in a Champions Trophy final against a team that may now wonder if they showed too little ambition with the bat despite batting down to No. 10. New Zealand batted like India from an earlier age, and India batted like the India of Rohit Sharma. It was destined to be their time.