How valuable is Rohit Sharma to the Indians of Mumbai?
Either to calm early nerves or transfer pressure on the opposition, Rohit Sharma broke character and went down the court to hit R Ashwin over the top with just the second ball of the chase. This was not the type of template Rohit usually follows, which involves keeping the ball on the ground for the first half of his innings. But having appeared in five IPL finals before, Rohit is aware of the mantra of success for the big games. He then scored 68 runs and guided the Mumbai Indians to their fifth title.
In many ways, the evolution and dominance of the Mumbai Indians as a team has paralleled Rohit’s personal growth and success. He doesn’t like to think too much about the past and talk about what triggered his transformation as a cricketer. But his childhood coach, Dinesh Lad, believes that being chosen by the Mumbai Indians in 2011 was “the best thing that could have happened to him.”
“Rohit called me one day and went into details about how Sachin Tendulkar practices,” recalls Lad. “I said, ‘So what’s stopping you from practicing like this?'”
The call came just a few months after Rohit hit a low when he was not selected to the 2011 World Cup squad. He had been in and out of the Indian squad for four years, had posted great scores in national cricket and IPL, was He talked a lot about his talent, but when it came time for his possible first World Cup call-up, he saw players like Virat Kohli and Yusuf Pathan, who had entered the national team after him, replace him for a place in the bus.
There was no choice but to be hard on the truth, Lad felt.
“There were distractions in his life after all the money he made with the IPL. He moved to Bandra, his lifestyle changed and his cricket practice started to suffer. I had to be frank with him: cricket is what he made and spending his time playing cricket was the only way he could have gotten up. It was a half hour talk. He rarely abused, but that day, I had to use nasty words while talking to him. Fact is, I didn’t I was giving the game enough time, and as a result, I didn’t have a place to deserve a place in the World Cup. “
Rohit celebrated his first IPL title win with Deccan Chargers
With the help of some tough talk from Tendulkar and some help from Abhishek Nayar, Rohit took criticism on her chin and practiced daily for four hours at the Bandra-Kurla Complex facilities.
Just a week before the announcement of the World Cup team, Rohit was captured by the Mumbai Indians at the IPL auction. Shortly after the India World Cup campaign, the players had gathered for their IPL camps. It’s not that Rohit hadn’t met Tendulkar, his childhood hero, before, but the fact that he was watching him at practice and practicing hard, just days after being India’s best runner in a successful campaign of the World Cup, I couldn’t Miss your attention. In that, he found a part of the blueprint for success.
Since 2013, he has leveled up so fast that even those who have closely followed his progress as a cricketer from a young age have had trouble making sense of the change. Pravin Amre, who is part of the MI support staff who had coached Rohit during his growing years, was pleasantly surprised to meet him before the season.
“I met him after five years, he’s changed a lot! He looks so much calmer, more relaxed and confident in his game,” says Amre. “He understands his game better than ever.”
However, even Amre, who is one of the most in-demand hitting coaches in India, having coached various players from their formative years to those who have played international cricket, has had trouble figuring out what changed in his neighborhood. . “Rohit always had the talent and, in fact, if he didn’t end up with 25 hundred tests, he wouldn’t have done him justice,” believes Amre. “But what has caught his eye in limited overs cricket is just something that a player who has reached three hundred ODI can explain. He has reached a stage where he understands his game better than anyone.”
Rohit’s entries into the final, even with a hamstring injury that has led the BCCI to preserve him for games even a month from now, had those signs of simplicity that Amre refers to; of a definite purpose for your attack and defense, the calculation for the big shots and the individual ones. Much of that clarity and maturity in his game has also translated into his leadership. In a season that saw all IM players from 1 to 11 shot (even the back-ups make helpful contributions), Rohit believes the success was due to the trust instilled in the players.
Few would understand Rohit’s evolution as well as Ricky Ponting, who left his post as IM captain midway through his failed 2013 campaign.
Suryakumar has vouched for the confidence shown by his captain as the reason for his consistent scoring streak, as was evident when Rohit Sharma put an arm around Rahul Chahar’s shoulders and asked him to take the team off the field after the Young spinner had a bad day in Qualifier 1. It was a similar endorsement that Rohit of MS Dhoni had received when he was going through a streak of inconsistent scores early in his international cricket.
“I had to find the balance to get the best out of them,” Rohit said of his approach to leadership. “I’m not someone who can run after them with a stick. At the end of the day, you have to make the best of them, and the best way to do that is by giving them the confidence that they understand their role. Rahul missed today (the final ), and we must make sure we put our arm around him and assure him that he did nothing wrong and that it was a tactical move. “
But it goes beyond just instilling confidence. On the day of the final, when Rohit responded late to a ‘No’ call from Suryakumar while attempting a quick single, both batters found themselves on the same end of the field and the latter had to sacrifice his window to secure entry. -Captain form leads the team through. Rohit not only regretted his fault at the time, by bowing his head, but also later stated, “The kind of shape I was in, I should have sacrificed my window for Surya.”
Rohit’s evolution as captain has directly coincided with the fortunes of the franchise and its focus on the lesser-known players entering the setup. Few would have captured that change as well as Ricky Ponting, who had stepped down as IM captain midway through their failed 2013 campaign for Rohit to take over and guide them to their first title win. On the last day of 2020, he was in the opposition camp as head coach, being the recipient of Rohit’s calmest, most mature and confident avatar. As a hitter and captain in a pressure game, Ponting would know how much transformation has taken place, if not how it went.
At the end of the presentation ceremony, Rohit picked up the trophy, presented it to his teammates and made his way to the far right of the group when the team image was clicked. It may be all the rage lately for captains not to get the spotlight in these photos, but Rohit had found himself in the same corner even 11 years earlier when he was with the Deccan Chargers, celebrating his first title win. Although he was young, he was just as important to them even then, finishing the season as their highest scoring Indian player.
While many things have changed at Rohit Sharma from that first title to sixth, some things have not. And there are some things that he made clear that he didn’t: “They won’t see me play for any other franchise.”
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