da fazobetai： Amid all the noise that swirled around him, he produced a 32nd ODI hundred that was as clinical as it was exhilarating

da roleta： Sidharth Monga09-Feb-20252:49

Manjrekar: ‘Incredible how easily Rohit does it’

Arguably the best cricket song ever written, this is a poignant look at the imminent end of one’s life as possibly one’s life innings. Roy Harper, the singer and writer of the song, apparently riffed on a line he heard from the commentator John Arlott on the radio about an old cricketer approaching retirement. The more prosaic meaning being you never know when an old cricketer has been dismissed for the last time.Related

India seal series as Rohit roars back into form with 32nd ODI ton

'I really broke it down into pieces' – Rohit reflects on comeback innings

Rohit Sharma is not “old”, but in elite sport, with the amount of batting talent breathing down your neck in a batting-rich country like India, and you volunteer to sit out an international match at the age of 37 years and eight months, you never really know.You begin to wonder whether it is the format and the conditions and the bowling, or if the eye and reactions are going. You begin to wonder if the batter is doubting himself, because which elite cricketer refuses to back themselves when they are the captain of the national side?Then Rohit gets out for 2 in his first ODI in six months, and you forget what a colossal run he has been on in this format, going on for close to three years. In the six months between his last ODI series and this one, Rohit led India to their first home Test series defeat in 12 years – which turned into their first-ever home whitewash – and looked like he couldn’t buy a Test run on a tour where India’s only win came when he hadn’t yet joined the squad. He had already retired from T20Is by then.Now there are reports that the selectors have asked him what his future plans are. It could be time for a reset when the Champions Trophy concludes next month, and time to start planning for the 2027 World Cup, which will take place when Rohit is 39. Then he gets out for 2. You never know whether he’s gone.The shot that brought about Rohit’s downfall in Nagpur brought him his first six in Cuttack•BCCISix overs into India’s chase at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack, a floodlight tower goes off. It is unsafe to carry on playing, but Rohit just doesn’t feel like going off. He seems to be asking if the fielding side wants to continue even with that one tower off. The umpires can’t let that happen because they are responsible for the safety of the players.Rohit has been off to a good start, and seems to be wary of the fickleness of the cricketing gods. Batters tend to be. India didn’t train on the eve of the T20 World Cup final that they won in Barbados last year, but Rohit made sure India got the same dressing room they had occupied when they had played and won at Kensington Oval earlier in the tournament.So much can go wrong, and so much is out of your control when you bat, that batters tend to become obsessive. They try to control what they can’t in ways that seem illogical from the outside.It must be a long long time since Rohit has felt this good on a cricket field so it is natural he doesn’t want anything to go wrong. The 29 off 18 that he’s scored so far bring to mind Rohit’s colossal ODI achievements. He has already hit three sixes and gone past Chris Gayle’s 331. He is now behind only Shahid Afridi’s 351. The first of these three sixes is a repeat of the shot that got him out in Nagpur, only executed better this time. The first sign that he’s not yet gone.Rohit has now hit a whopping 94 sixes in 39 innings since his first game as full-time ODI captain in February 2022, and deciding India needed to play in a certain way. The next-highest six-hitter over this period has hit 68 in 55 innings. Rohit is one of only five batters to have scored over 1000 runs in this period at a 50-plus average and 100-plus strike rate. In the 40 matches that Rohit has played as full-time captain, openers have averaged 36.76 and struck at 99.34. Rohit has gone at 50.91 and 118.95.This run features the 2023 ODI World Cup, during which he frequently killed games off in the first powerplay. The same trend followed in the T20I World Cup, in crucial games against Australia and England. In batting in this manner, however, Rohit also went through 38 ODI innings with just two centuries.The word ‘selfless’ had become as much of a millstone around Rohit’s neck as ‘talented’ had earlier in his career•Associated PressLike “talented” early in his career, “selfless” has become a millstone around Rohit’s neck in his time as captain. It started with Rohit inverting his own game to lead a philosophy change in India’s limited-overs batting. Then the word was thrown around trivially, if he even did so much as attend a press conference. The only logical progression was for it to become a pejorative on social media.However, in setting the tone, in reconditioning India’s approach to risk-taking, Rohit has indeed been selfless. From the time that Rohit started to open regularly in 2013 to this floodlight failure, he has been scoring an ODI hundred every five innings. He has used a trusted formula: get yourself in nice and slow and then explode in the second half of the innings. With his numbers, it was tough to argue against his methods, but he felt he needed to lead from the front if there was to be a change in the way India batted.So since February 2022, Rohit has been front-loading without worrying about landmarks and hundreds. His starts have frequently set the base up for monstrous hitting when batting first, and have taken the pressure off other batters in chases.However, in the last ODI series Rohit played, in Sri Lanka back in August 2024, India failed to win a single game even though he had scored 58 off 47, 64 off 44, and 35 off 20, and left them needing 151 in 35.4 overs with eight wickets in hand, 144 in 36.3 with nine in hand, and 196 in 42.5 with eight in hand.There are two reasons, then, for Rohit to tone down his selflessness somewhat in this chase in Cuttack. He needs a big score to calm the voices around him and possibly his own too, and he needs to see the chase through when two quick wickets go down, bringing in a dynamic, young lower middle order prone to the odd collapse. He does this without letting up on the strike-rate. The hitting is pristine. Anything overpitched goes flying. Sometimes he manipulates the length by charging the quicks.This is no hail mary of a desperate batter. This is as clinical as an ODI century at a strike-rate of 132.22 gets. There is a cold deliberation to the way he picks the balls he wants to hit and the ones he wants to tap for singles. He doesn’t show what it means to him personally. He doesn’t even take off his helmet at reaching the century, his first in international cricket since March 2024. In this year he has led India to their first World Cup in 13 years, and also to an unceremonious end to their home Test run. No question is asked about his emotions at the post-match presentation.Rohit gets India close but doesn’t quite take them all the way to the win, which India get to after a brief stumble. In scoring the century, though, Rohit has served a reminder of his ODI form to anyone who needed it. Perhaps to himself too. A reminder that he is not yet gone. Not unless he himself decides to go.