By: Drcricket7 Staff
Can you imagine an Indian ODI team without Rohit Sharma at the top of the batting order now? No, you can’t. That is because he is your key player.
Also, because he the only batsman in the world with two double hundreds in the shorter version of the game. But this Mumbai cricketer didn’t become an overnight sensation.
He had to go through the grind to reach at the level where he is today. Essentially, Rohit was a middle-order batsman, who couldn’t lay his hands on success that easily.
A career graph of Yuvraj Singh inspired Rohit Sharma tremendously in his formative years, but it was of practically no help to the flamboyant cricketer.
He got limited success and that too without consistency. The only good thing happened was that the confidence of the team management he enjoyed as a youngster.
Under captain MS Dhoni, the management showed immense faith on a talented Rohit Sharma. Subsequently, he was persisted to play at the highest level despite a series of failures.
Thanks to those investments, India have a Rohit Sharma who can dominate any attack in the world today. In the same way, the team management needs to be patient and give long rope to its bowlers, which doesn’t happen very often.
The recent ODI series loss to South Africa was attributed to India’s horrible bowling display in the decider game in Mumbai last Sunday.
From there on, a lot has been said and written about how poorly the home grown bowlers have under-performed and how there is a huge dearth of talent at the domestic level.
But not many could suggest the way forward for Indian bowlers. If a pacer like Mohit Sharma played a significant role in the 2015 World Cup campaign and did reasonable well for India thereafter, a bad game shouldn’t change the perspective about the Haryana pacer.
He young, able bodied and can carry out responsibilities and, therefore, a below average bowling analysis in a particular match should make him a bad bowler.
To help Mohit Sharma emerge as a better performer after every bad game, it’s the duty of the team management to give a long rope, like the way it’s given to any talented batsman, to make him feel secured.
Remember, India might not have seen a Virender Sehwag or a Kapil Dev if the team management then wouldn’t have thought of giving them a long rope.
Former Indian captain Kapil Dev rightly puts it: “Bowlers are majdoors (workers). Who wants to be a worker? Everybody wants to be an officer.”
