Other things remaining equal, if the choice for a Test place is between two players of unproven record at the batting position available, the younger man usually gets the job. Shubman Gill is 20, and Rohit Sharma 32, so it should be a no-brainer. Yet, the senior man, who has played 27 Tests and averages over 85 in nine Tests at home, will be given one more chance to seal a place at the top of the order.
Selectors, fans, teammates, former players, and television commentators are all willing Rohit on to succeed; few players in Indian cricket have had such cheerleaders.
As a natural timer of the ball with the instinct to attack, he brings to the game a touch and an attitude few possess, and some of the support is understandable. If he could match his one-day record (8000-plus runs at 48, three double centuries in 27 centuries overall), Indian cricket would certainly gain. If the experiment fails, then Rohit goes back to the cut and thrust of one-day and T20 cricket, to finish as a footnote in Indian Test history, a long-surviving disappointment and might-have-been. It is a gamble India are willing to take, the impact of possible success overcoming the price of failure.
No secrets
Over the next three years India tour New Zealand, Australia, England and South Africa. Rohit averages 26 in 18 Tests abroad with a highest score of 79 in 33 innings. As opener he will be severely tested with two kinds of bowling that aren’t popular in white ball cricket — the swinging delivery and the short one bowled into the ribs. There are no secrets — or helpful field and bowling restrictions — in Test cricket.
This partially answers the question fans often ask: How can a player who dominates white ball cricket be so ordinary in the red ball version? Technique isn’t everything, of course. Sourav Ganguly who initially struggled with some of the same issues, changed his game around and showed how a big heart and sheer self-confidence can sometimes overcome technical shortcomings.
Rohit Sharma is not the first middle-order batsman who has been asked to open, nor will he be the last. The selectors are probably hoping that the move will be as successful as the one initiated by skipper Ganguly when he asked Virender Sehwag to open five matches after he began his career, like Rohit, with a century on debut at No. 6. Sehwag went on to rewrite the book on opening Test batting. India will settle for far less with Rohit — consistency and good starts with his partner so the middle order can come into its own.
Ganguly understood the value of having Sehwag in the side but didn’t know where to fit him in. The middle order read Dravid-Tendulkar-Laxman-Ganguly. At this stage of his career, Rohit Sharma gets a new gig not because the middle order is as strong, but as a way of salvaging a career in red ball cricket that appears unfulfilled, incomplete, and deeply unsatisfactory for a batsman who has charmed his way through so many short innings.
He will be up against Kagiso Rabada, one of only two bowlers in the game with over 100 wickets whose strike rate is in the 30s. Rabada spearheads an attack which also has Vernon Philander and Ngidi Lungi, and if over the next three Tests Rohit scores the runs that inspires self-belief for the tougher battles ahead, one part of the gamble would have succeeded.
Already Priyank Panchal has given the selectors a reminder with a century against South Africa-A while Abhimanyu Easwaran, younger by five years, has shown himself to be an organised batsman with an appetite for big scores. K.L. Rahul isn’t out of it yet, merely out of form. Prithvi Shaw’s drugs ban ends in November soon after he turns 20 and he comes into reckoning again.
Costly philosophy
There is much to be said for selecting a young player when he is in form and getting runs consistently. It has happened before that a promising youngster who is kept waiting is finally chosen during a season when he is struggling, and finishes with a career that is needlessly brief. “He is young, his turn will come,” is an Indian philosophy that has cost us in the past.
Cricket selection works on the principle that the younger player deserves a chance to succeed while the older one must be given a chance to fail. Rohit Sharma’s record in the shorter game and the gut feeling that with experience he might be less inclined to throw it away as he has in the past has earned him a final call. Attractive batsmanship backed by all-round support is a formula for persistence, although the likes of Karun Nair, for one, might believe he could have done with similar support. But it doesn’t come to everybody, not even someone who has a triple century in Tests.
