Make or Break Year For Rohit Sharma

Upright batting posture, lazyish trigger movement, the gift of timing and physical strength to assemble these facets into an effective crescendo. The ability to maneuver a particular delivery in multiple directions delectably adds to this armor and decisive feet movement in this process renders an image of élan and eloquence. This is the precise set of events which highlights of most Rohit Sharma batting knocks present, albeit varying in their duration!

What those clipped moments smudge is the multiple hits-and-misses at the start and more crucially the instances of inexplicable brain-freeze batting shots which cut many promised stories drastically short of its length. It has been six years since Rohit has been around the international circuit and thanks largely to his touted description has managed to keep the followers yearning consistently for a string of feasts rather than bits of tasty meals. This wish almost materialized with a reasonably good run in 2013, but in a clichéd manner has been disrupted since the tour to South Africa.

Abundance of talent can complement a system seamlessly when every cog is working fine, but can be a bigger problem when it encounters even a minor glitch. Look around and you will find a few names in world cricket endowed with bunch of natural attributes and an enviable repute prior to graduating to the international level. Likes of Ian Bell, Mahela Jayawardene are names you would pay to watch for, yet somehow the career numbers do injustice to the potential these players possess. So is this a case of inflated expectations based on perception or the failure of transition from one level to another?

You often hear ex-players, analysts’ talk of sport being a mental battle after a certain point of competition. A repetitive error may sometimes be a case of distinct contexts rather than replays of a bad shot. Good players with limited scope of arsenal manage to keep the troughs in their timeline to a shallow depth and weed out the errors rather quickly. It is the impact players in your side which experience sharp periods of phenomenal success and tougher days out of poor form. Great players imbibe the mental & performance aspects to incorporate effectiveness into a long career. Additionally such players are ready to sacrifice flamboyance for optimal yields and longevity.

Which bracket does Rohit Sharma belong to then? He has special batting prowess and has already exhibited glimpses of that. Yet unlike a Virat Kohli he hasn’t managed to emerge as a dependable match-winner or a flexible lynchpin like a Dhoni. His batting enhanced under additional responsibility during the IPL, may be it time for him to coalesce the pressure of expectations and his responsibility as a top order batsman for more consistent returns.

Consistency notwithstanding, Rohit has another major thing to prove - his ability to score runs outside India. Barring the patchy brilliance in Australia (2008), West Indies (2011) and in England (Champions Trophy 2013) he hasn’t realized the true expectations of being a quality batsman. The South Africa tour and the ODI leg of the New Zealand tour has been a bit of collective failure, yet many didn’t expect Rohit Sharma to fail so prominently after a brilliant home series against Australia. You got patchy form with likes of Sehwag, Yuvraj and Laxman but you always backed them to deliver in crunch moments for their ability to perform globally; for Rohit to emulate that trust it is imperative for him to deliver in unfamiliar environments.

With 119 ODIs and 4 tests its early days to be judgmental about Rohit’s career profile, but playing alongside likes of Virat & Dhoni the expectation of a more consistent output is not injudicious; especially more so with a few good players waiting in the wings. Rohit Sharma has the equipment, guidelines of dos & don’ts, the appropriate platform, but time moves only in one direction and can be very slippery if not valued at the opportune moments. A highly rated Mumbai batsman in the 90s sparked during his brief international stint only to be remembered as a failed dream. Simultaneously another Mumbai batsman with a massive repute converted a slow-ish start into a legendary narrative. Today another Mumbai batsman is on that crucial 5^th/6^th year lap of international cricket with a similar track record. The following 12-15 months could be the most defining phase of his career, like it was in the case of the previous two illustrations!