Categories: Sports

BGT – Rohit Sharma chooses “to rest” as Jasprit Bumrah leads India in Sydney

The issue of the change in leadership was not addressed directly at the toss at the SCG, with Bumrah only saying: “Our captain has shown his leadership as well, he has chosen to rest from this game. It shows the unity within the team.” Bumrah had captained India to victory in the first Test of the series in Perth when Rohit was on paternity leave.

Rohit had been a peripheral presence as India went through their final preparations ahead of the first ball in Sydney. He and the rest of the team arrived at the ground at 9am but it wasn’t till 15 minutes later that he stepped onto the outfield at the SCG. By that time, Bumrah had gone up to the pitch, got through a spot-bowling routine and checked in with Gautam Gambhir. Rohit stepped onto the ground at 9.15am. He too made a beeline for the pitch, bending down and pressing his hands into it. He played a bit of football with Sarfaraz Khan and Rishabh Pant. He was conspicuously quiet at the team huddle with Gambhir and Virat Kohli doing the talking. Finally he left the field at 9.40am after the toss. The reserve players and the support staff lined up on the edge of the boundary for the national anthems but Rohit wasn’t with them.

Speculation around his place in the team began after India lost the fourth Test in Melbourne, where he made scores of 3 and 9, as reports emerged that he was planning to retire from the format at the end of the series. On the eve of the fifth Test, India coach Gautam Gambhir did not confirm or deny whether Rohit would play in Sydney – he only said the XI would be decided after taking a look at the pitch. Rohit did not have as active a training session as some of his team-mates.

He was subsequently left out of a Test that India must win to draw the series and avoid handing over the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to Australia for the first time in ten years. After joining the squad midway through the Perth Test following the birth of his son, Rohit gave up his opening position to KL Rahul, who had played a crucial role at the top of the order as India took a 1-0 lead in the series.

But after scoring only 3, 6 and 10 in the middle order in the second and third Tests, Rohit moved back to open at the MCG but suffered two failures again, leaving his average for the series a paltry 6.2 after five innings. He had averaged only 13.30 in ten innings against Bangladesh and New Zealand during the home season before the Australia tour.

Rohit’s year in Test cricket had started positively, with two hundreds and a fifty in India’s 4-1 victory at home against England between January and March. He then captained India to victory in the 2024 T20 World Cup in June, after which he retired from that format, and it was only in September that his form dipped sharply.

If Rohit’s Test career does end with this Border-Gavaskar Trophy, he finishes with 4301 runs at an average of 40.57 with 12 hundreds and 18 half-centuries in 67 Tests. His was a career of two parts. The first one began with tremendous promise, with centuries in his first two Test innings against West Indies in Kolkata and Mumbai, but he was unable to find consistent success in the middle order and was in and out of the side. In 2019, with India needing a new Test opener, Rohit was promoted to the top of the order and it’s there that he enjoyed his best phase as a Test batter – 2697 runs at an average of 42.80 with nine hundreds. He took over as Test captain after Virat Kohli resigned in early 2022 and led India in 24 matches.

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