The incredible, crazy, jaw-dropping return of Rohit Sharma

How do you describe the fantastical, the utterly unimaginable? Where do you start? What words do you use to put down what your eyes have seen but could scarcely believe? How do you tell of the awe you felt and the audacity you witnessed? How do you explain how a finger injury led somehow, 10 weeks later, to a perfect storm of one-day batting? Perhaps it doesn’t matter how one starts. All that matters is to attempt it because the line between reality and fiction has been blurred to the point of nonexistence. [caption id=“attachment_1801911” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rohit Sharma celebrates his double century during the 4th ODI cricket match against Sri Lanka in Kolkata on Thursday. PTI[/caption] The bare facts are this: Rohit Sharma, playing his first international match in over two months, smashed a blistering, otherworldly 264 against Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens that shattered the old record — held by Virender Sehwag — by 45 runs. It took Rohit 173 balls to make those 264 runs. He struck 33 fours, another world record, and nine sixes. His final fifty, the one that took him from 200 to 250, a place no international cricketer has ever been before, took him 15 deliveries. It was a spectacular return after breaking his finger in England, a period where he had to watch Ajinkya Rahane step in to his shoes and make two ODI hundreds. There were whispers that perhaps Rahane should remain an opener even after Rohit returned. The pressure was on, even if the match was meaningless. The riposte has been devastating and definitive There was no indication of what was to come in the early stages. Watching Rohit bat is typically an exercise in patience. He takes ages to get going, eating up the strike while leaving the scoreboard barren. At the Eden Gardens, it was no different. He was a car whose gears were stuck. After four overs, Rohit had made four from 15 balls. Almost all great sporting achievements have an element of luck. Rohit received his in the fifth over. Likely frustrated at being tied down, he took an ugly swipe at the ball. It flew off the edge and looked to settle in Thisara Perera’s hands at third man. The fielder inexplicably dropped it. The rest will go down in cricket history. Slowly, inexorably Rohit began to impose his will on this game. Like a bomb with a long fuse, Rohit hummed along for a while in the company of Virat Kohli. They took mainly ones and twos. But each time you looked at the scorecard, Rohit’s strike-rate was just that little bit better than it had been five minutes ago. The fifty came up from 72 balls and you thought, hopefully Rohit turns this into a century. You never know with Rohit. A rush of blood always seems to be lurking around the next corner. Sometimes though, something extraordinary lurks instead. Having sussed out the pitch and adjusted his sights to the Sri Lankan bowlers, Rohit casually took Kulasekara apart in the 30th over. The ball flew through point, over long-on and past mid-off. Just like that, he was into the 90s. When Rohit is in song, there is no violence in his batting, despite its brutality. The bat simply flows in an arc destined to send the ball as far from his presence as possible. The milestones now began to accumulate as quickly as the ball disappeared to the boundary. His 100 came up from exactly 100 balls. His second fifty had taken him just 28 balls. Rohit sank to his knees in joy and relief. You saw how much this knock mattered to him. How much it meant to silence the doubts and the questions, at least for tonight. The gears had been fixed and the car was now cruising. Then the boosters hit. In what seemed like an instant, Rohit had gone from 100 to 132. You looked at the scoreboard. There were still 15 overs left. Could he make a second one-day double hundred? No. He couldn’t. Could he? Okay, he could but that would be crazy. By this point, Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews had rotated his bowlers not once but twice. The bowlers pitched it up. They bowled short. They bowled on offstump and legstump. It mattered little. Rohit did not discriminate against length, line or the bowlers. He treated everything with disdain. Rohit seemed to be operating out of normal time. The runs came in a torrent but the overs hardly moved. He waved past 150 and kept roaring down the highway towards 200. By now, the double-hundred was on everybody’s mind. Nobody had ever made two double-hundreds in one-day cricket before. Until 2010, nobody had made even one. Rohit, though, was one of three men who had. He reached unchartered territory with a crunching drive through the offside in the 46th over. The celebration was not as demonstrative as the 100, but the smile was big and wide. The resting MS Dhoni presciently tweeted out that if Rohit doesn’t get out, he would get to 250. First though, Rohit had to get past Sehwag and again Sri Lanka came to his aid. One ball after getting to 200, he pulled a full toss straight to Prasanna on the boundary. Once again, a Sri Lanka fielder let the ball slip through his fingers. This time, it even went for four. The next two overs showcased the kind of violence that makes little boys and girls decide to become batters rather than bowlers. Eranga was shellacked for four, six, six and four, the last one coming courtesy of yet another dropped catch. Then Kulasekara, poor Kulasekara, was delicately clubbed to oblivion. Rohit cunningly cut the first and fifth deliveries behind the stumps for four, smote the fourth past mid-off and then played the most astonishing shot of all – a shot that looked impossible and yet he played it. Rohit moved outside off. Kulasekara followed him and bowled it even wider. Rohit reached over and ignoring the laws of physics, sent the ball soaring over wide long-on with a flick of his wrists – off one leg. Forty runs had come from two overs. The 250 followed in the 49th over, the highest score by an India player in a List A match, beating Shikhar Dhawan’s 248 for India A in South Africa. It was also a total that would have won India the first and third ODIs in this series. With one ball to go, Rohit needed a boundary to get to 268, the record score for a List A match set by Ali Brown. Fortune though, had favoured him enough. He could not clear long-off and this time, the fielder held on to the ball. It could be pointed out that the pitch was a good one and the bowling attack something less than stellar. But that would be churlish. There have been good pitches and bad bowling attacks throughout cricket history. Yet no one has ever smashed 264, or close to it, in a one-day game. In doing so, Rohit has made sure his name will sit forever alongside the legends of the game.