Rohit Sharma suffering from a crisis of confidence as much as a crisis of batting form

Rohit Sharma’s stay at the batting crease on Friday afternoon lasted less than ten minutes. Of his first four deliveries, he let one go, defended a couple and punched the other down the ground for three runs. It was too short a sample size to offer a clue to what was going on in his mind, though you suspect that given how the Indian captain is naturally inclined, he would come out all guns blazing.

The fifth ball Rohit received, from his opposite number Pat Cummins, was short, outside his off-stump, moving a little further away from the right-hander as it neared him. It was head-high too. Maybe the skipper would have been better off letting it go; if he wanted to play an attacking shot, he could have resorted to the upper cut or the slash over point. Instead, he chose his go-to shot, the pull – which has fetched him hundreds of runs at all levels – with disastrous consequences.

More from First Cricket News

India vs Pakistan Asia Cup Match LIVE Updates: Amid boycott call, Men In Blue get ready to face arch-rivals in Dubai BCCI defends decision to play vs Pakistan in Asia Cup months after Pahalgam attack: 'If we boycott...'

This wasn’t really a pull because the ball was too high even for one of the best pullers in the game. Instead, it can at best be described as a semi-pull, half-flick as the wrists came into play. If the intention was to keep the ball down, it failed spectacularly. The laws of physics dictated that it would take a miracle to achieve that objective. All Rohit managed was to put up a catch to mid-on, safely pouched by Scott Boland to gift Australia with their first breakthrough of the Indian reply to their massive 474 .

Indian skipper Rohit Sharma is gone for just three runs! #AUSvIND pic.twitter.com/m1fLiqKLO7

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) December 27, 2024

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

'Won't require surgery...': Real reason behind Jasprit Bumrah's absence from 5th Test revealed in new report

PCB bans players from WCL over India-Pakistan match controversy

It was Rohit’s third single-digit knock of the series in four hits, and a 13th low score in his last 14 Test innings. If he wasn’t feeling the pressure before this latest failure, he surely should now. His bat isn’t firing, his team has lost four of the last five Tests under his leadership, and not even a return to the top of the batting tree has worked. Where does Rohit Sharma go from here?

You’d like him to go on for some more time, if only to continue to break the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill further into Test cricket. He’d probably himself like that, but for that, he must start scoring. And the team must start delivering. At least one of those two must happen, ideally both. For now, neither is, and that’s the big worry.

Returning to the top of the order

Rohit played the last two Tests as a No. 6 batter for the first time since the end of 2018, with absolutely no success. While it is true that he got two excellent deliveries in the pink-ball Test from Cummins and Scott Boland respectively, he could so easily have not flirted with a widish ball from Cummins in the previous Test in Brisbane that he feathered to Alex Carey behind the stumps. A strange but irrefutable fallout of the lack of form is how someone’s first mistake invariably becomes their last. Ask Virat Kohli, who batted superbly for two hours on Friday, until finally chasing a ball outside off for the first time and promptly nicking it to Carey.

There is no questioning Rohit’s pedigree and the heights he has touched as opener in both white- and red-ball cricket, but the last three and a half months have been anything but kind to him. Rohit’s decision to bat in the middle order in Adelaide and Brisbane was somewhat understandable because he didn’t want to split Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul after their 201-run opening stand in the second innings in Perth in his absence. But his mind has been attuned to opening the Test batting for the last five years and it isn’t as easy to drop down the order as one might imagine.

Also Read | Assistant coach Abhishek Nayar defends Rohit's return to top of Indian batting order

Now that he is back at the top, Rohit’s mandate is clear – to make the most of his recent familiarity with that challenge, and do whatever he does whole-heartedly, with complete commitment to the stroke, which is the cause in this instance. Friday was a case of half-measures. The ball wasn’t there for the stroke, the stroke itself wasn’t singular or born out of conviction. Confidence is a double-edged sword because when one has it, it leads to spectacular things and when one is searching for it, it remains stubbornly elusive. Rohit is clearly suffering from a crisis of confidence as much as he is suffering a crisis of batting form. One seeps into the other seamlessly; until now, Rohit hasn’t found a way to compartmentalise the two, to keep them apart, to prevent one from spilling over to the other. How long he can afford to keep doing so is a question that must be answered, quickly.

Jaiswal highlights importance of confidence and belief

Jaiswal is the clearest example of what confidence and belief can do. This hasn’t been a great series for the young man, his monumental 161 in the Perth second innings notwithstanding. His first-innings scores in this series are 0, 0 and a second-ball four; each time, he has perished to Michell Starc, the last two times in the first over of the Indian innings. The left-hander could have sought the easy way out and requested Rohit to take strike against the left-arm spinner, but he backed his skills and his technique, and not just saw off the Starc threat but got on top of the bowling and dictated terms to them even though Australia’s 474 loomed as an intimidating, imposing edifice.

It’s this confidence that Rohit needs to infuse in his cricketing personality. As captain, without a doubt, and as batter. Some might say it is already too late, that it’s time to move on and to look ahead and Rohit or his loyal supporters won’t contest that line of thought furiously. But there is still a Test and a half to go, potentially three innings ahead of the Indian captain, time enough to make a statement, if not a difference.

Rohit has been game for a challenge throughout his career but at 38, he must ask himself if the fire is still burning, if the competitive juices are still flowing as furiously as they once used to. The answer he gets from within will dictate what happens from here on, one is pretty confident. Moment of reckoning then, for India’s mercurial leader who is now desperately searching for inspiration.