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Rohit Sharma is scheduled to play his 265th ODI on Wednesday. This is not usually a significant milestone. However, Rohit has managed to be exceptional even amidst the exceptional players.
But now, eighteen years into his ODI career, our man is about to venture into unknown waters. His stats sheet has consistently displayed a greater number under “high score” than “matches played” ever since he participated in his first ODI. Rohit is likely to surpass 264, ten years after he set a record that many genuinely believe may never be surpassed.
Now is the time to reflect on and remember the high-scoring Rohit. Remember when fans of Rohit Shah would convince fans of Virat Kohli Shah that Rohit was just as good as the best batsman in contemporary Indian history?
One notion was that “once Rohit gets past 70, there’s almost no stopping him,” even though Kohli was the mass-producer of hundreds. It was hard to refute in ODIs. Three times as many as any other batter, the man owns three double-hundreds, and he accounts for 25% of all 200+ scores ever made in the format. Sixteen of his thirty-one hundreds have resulted in at least 130 runs.
On a track, other batters just “get in”. Like the alien from Alien, Rohit sucks himself into an enemy attack and eats until he is half the size of the spaceship and they are fading husks.
Not as of late, though. The more current Rohit is a very adept DGAF character, at least in ODI cricket. He has seen it all, fought in every possible game, and identified the specific area of ODI cricket that he wants to shake up.Rohit has evolved into a powerplaying aggressor most of the time.
Rohit has batted in 13 ODIs since the 2023 ODI World Cup began, failing to receive a start in just two of them. If you start batting at the 20-ball point of the remaining 11, he is striking at 150 or more (more than 30 runs) in seven of those innings and at 100 or more in ten. The sole instance of this is when he was playing against England at the World Cup on an incredibly challenging pitch in Lucknow.
He has struck 64 off 44 and 58 off 47 in the current Sri Lankan series, both on extremely spin-favorable tracks. When you make a half-century, like Rohit did on both occasions, even strike rates as low as 80 are acceptable on these wickets. However, in this case, Rohit’s opening positions on both occasions allowed the middle order to have some breathing room as they tried to chase down low scores.
Once upon a time, Sri Lankan spinners were so good at what they did that the mere pressure of needing to score runs would result in wickets. Sri Lanka had just one chance to win in games when Rohit had so spectacularly peacocked his way through the early overs: to destroy the opponent. Their spinners on very dry surfaces deserve credit for having accomplished this twice.
He hasn’t really attempted to play himself in since the 2023 World Cup began, with his control % rising to just 82.32 in the following 25 balls after starting at 79.79 in the first 25.
And yet, Rohit has found the joy of hitting balls just okay, even though he hasn’t always middled the ball with the fervour that his childhood instructors would have liked. He knows that if he hits them hard enough to clear the pitch, there will also be runs. It seems like Rohit is in the prime of his pragmatism.
He wants to go on, he wants to compete in major events, and he wants more hardware in his possession. However, Rohit has also entered a stage of his career where he is merely a single star in the cosmos. And that player’s current goal is to score as many runs in the early overs as feasible.