Rohit Sharma: all over the place as a Test batter, less annoying than Virat Kohli as a Test captain

3 minute read

They called him Nohit, they called him Hitman – honestly, just make your bloody minds up. When a specialist batter’s feted for the central act of hitting the ball, but also infamous for completely failing to do so, you know he’s covered a bit of ground over the course of his career.

Rohit Sharma departs Test cricket with a decent claim to both those seemingly contradictory nicknames. He hit 177 in his first Test innings and 111 not out in his second and by his 17^th Test his overall average had sunk to 32.62.

He only played 67 Tests in total, but despite averaging 10.93 across the final eight, he still finished with a career average over 40. That’s as an opener, as well, in an era when India frequently misplaced their road/minefield switch at home and found themselves batting on the latter.

The best way we can sum Rohit up is by saying he was a batter who got out more beautifully than anyone else.

Deeper statistical analysis isn’t really our thing, but we do know how we feel about Rohit after watching all this play out. We quite like him. That’s no mean feat when he was all-formats captain for cricket’s sole superpower at a time when it hasn’t been afraid to throw its weight about from time to time.

Where his predecessor, Virat Kohli, was truculent and confrontational, Captain Rohit came across as more laidback and philosophical – only without that sense of drift that sometimes accompanied MS Dhoni’s Test leadership.

We’ve always felt that deep down, off the field, Kohli is basically an okay person. It’s just that when he’s on the field and playing against your team, it becomes very hard to believe that. Rohit, in contrast, always struck us as really rather unobjectionable, despite his job stacking the likeability odds against him.

A neat example: When India lost the World Test Championship to New Zealand under Kohli’s leadership, the captain griped that in the future the final, “has to be a test of character over three Tests” – his words awash with bitterness.

Given the opportunity to express the exact same thing after losing to Australia in the same competition a couple of years later, Rohit said: “In the next cycle, if it is possible, a three-match series would be ideal. I would love that.”

While the resultant headlines could basically be summed up as “SORE LOSER ROHIT WHINGES ABOUT TEST CHAMPIONSHIP” the actual quote didn’t come across that way at all. For Rohit the format didn’t have to change from one where India emerged second-best, it would just be lovely if it did – because more cricket!

Quite possibly we read that wrong – maybe he was smiling but very fucking furious – but this was how Rohit came across. That was the air he gave off. Amenable. Phlegmatic.

Perhaps those were qualities he developed as result of his bipolar returns with the bat. Alternatively, maybe they helped shape that output. Who knows? Maybe he didn’t even possess them at all.

All we know is that Kohli always seemed to express his anger and frustration at someone, whereas Rohit took it out on his hat.

It seems safe to assume that when the time comes, Kohli will rage against the dying of the light. Indeed, perhaps he’s already doing so.

And Rohit? Well he arrived late for his final series, demoted himself down the order, then dropped himself for the final Test.

Rohit Sharma. He once ate 25 fried eggs in one go, you know.

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