The Oval is renowned to be a batting paradise but things were different this time around. Chris Woakes and Ollie Robinson made the most of the conditions to skittle India for 191 after Joe Root won the toss. England escaped from 62 for five to open up a 99-run lead, leaving India to do all the heavy lifting if they weren’t to fall behind going into the decider in Manchester.
India needed Rohit and Rahul to rediscover their mojo after the disappointing starts of 1, 34 and 28 in their previous three outings. The two classy right-handers had set the tone in the first two Tests and their inability to see off the new ball had been one of the reasons for team totals of 78 and 278 all out in Leeds, and 191 in the first dig at The Oval. Now trailing by 99, the openers had to pitch in for India to stay in touch.
Rohit and Rahul responded admirably by stitching together 83. Watchful and risk-free, they took 34 overs in doing so. But no one was complaining. Time wasn’t a factor; it was all about runs on the board. Having bedded down, Rohit wasn’t going to throw it away this time. In Cheteshwar Pujara, he found another willing ally as India eased past the deficit and built a handy lead.
Rohit worked his way into the 80s, but once there, he was not going to linger any longer. Two sweeps off Moeen Ali’s off-spin, followed by a crunching pull off Anderson, took him to within a stroke of his century and he got there in style, imperiously depositing Moeen over long-on for his first six. It was an emphatic way to get to three-figures off 204 deliveries; his second half-century had taken just 60 balls as he worked through the gears. Rohit finally had a Test hundred on foreign soil after having scored seven of them at home. Only Mominul Haque (ten), Allan Lamb (nine) and Mahela Jayawardene (eight) had more tons at home before scoring one overseas.
There was equal parts relief and delight, but Rohit wasn’t caught up in the moment. He batted on to make 126, spanning nearly six hours, when he perished to the first delivery with the second new cherry, top-edging a pull to the only man behind square on the on-side. It was a disappointing end to a spectacular display—the timing of the dismissal equally galling—but his 153-run stand with Pujara had put India on the ascendancy. Further half-centuries from Rishabh Pant and Shardul Thakur pushed India to 466 and set England a target of 368, well beyond them against India’s quality bowling attack. Bowled out for 210, England went down by 157 runs to help India surge to a 2-1 advantage.
The teams travelled to Manchester for what ought to have been the fifth and final Test, but with a Covid outbreak in the Indian ranks and the fear of what might be, that game was postponed. It wouldn’t be another ten months before that Test was played in Birmingham in July 2022. Rohit (by now the all-format captain) missed the game due to Covid and India lost by seven wickets—the series ending 2-2—leaving everyone to wonder what might have been had the final game been played as scheduled in Manchester, with India carrying both momentum and form.
Rohit finished those four Tests in 2021 with 368 runs—India’s highest scorer. He averaged 52.57, but more importantly, his strike-rate was 42.49, which testified to the price he put on his wicket, the methods he adopted to give himself the best chance of success in difficult conditions and the efficacy of those methods in a stunning presentation of mind over matter. Rohit Sharma was no longer an accidental Test opener; indeed, by September 2021, within 22 months of his first shot at opening the batting, he was among the best Test opening batters of the time.
Also read: A football stadium rose to cheer this Mumbai police officer in 1977
‘To go up against a really good attack in Anderson and (Stuart) Broad, among others, in testing conditions and to do well, I’m sure that would have changed the course of his mindset more than his career,’ Ajit Agarkar affirms. ‘He was still a terrific white-ball player at that point. But I’m glad he is where he is in Test cricket today. The mental resolve… If you talk to him today or to the other guys who have worked with him or played with him, they will tell you how driven he is.
‘He might sometimes come across as lazy in his approach. But the heart and the mind are in the right place to do well for India and to take the Indian team to different heights. That is the evolution you want to see. Maybe it’s happened a little bit late in Test cricket, when he found his spot at the top. But that England series, just the way that he batted… The mental resolve he showed for someone who’s such a natural shot-maker, that was nice to see. It would have been a shame for someone with that kind of talent not to have a great Test career. Hopefully, he’s still got a long way to go.
‘But at least over the last three or four years in Test cricket, he’s made a name for himself. If that had not happened, it would have been a little bit of a disappointment for me, having seen him as a player very closely,’ Agarkar adds.
V.V.S. Laxman knows a thing or two about batting out of position in Test cricket. The Hyderabadi made his debut in 1996 against South Africa in Ahmedabad at number six, and made a crucial 51 in the second innings in India’s 64-run win. But four months later, he was forced to open the batting, for the first time in his life, against West Indies in Kingston. Even though he made 64 in his first act as opener, it wasn’t a position he was comfortable with. After grappling with that slot for three years and 14 Tests, with mixed results, he informed the selectors that he was through with opening, even if it meant he would have to miss Test cricket.
‘I know by experience that it’s tough (for a middle-order batter to open in Tests),’ Laxman points out. ‘But even then, it didn’t look like Rohit was playing for his place. In conditions where you almost expect him not to do well, whether it’s in England or even Australia—tough conditions, good bowling attacks—you don’t expect a number six batter like Rohit to do well as an opener. But he looked in control because of the work he put in. For example, he understood that a good start is essential for the team to do well in England. You know that the opening stand is very important. One of the keys to succeeding there is leaving the ball. Rohit worked out that leaving balls outside off was something he had to do for the sake of the team, and I feel that he went out of his way to change his natural game.
‘It is very difficult for a player of the calibre of Rohit to do that. It is very, very tough for a natural stroke-player, who has so many double-hundreds in ODIs, to control his bat and his hands. But he did that for the team and that is something he is continuing to do even as a captain. In the last two years, since he has become the captain, you see the example he is setting. He is walking the talk, as they say—“This is what I want from the batters and I am showing you how to do it.” But that has always been there with him. It is not something he has acquired just because he has become the captain.’
Laxman attributes Rohit’s growth as a fabulous leader to his innate desire to do what’s always best for the team. ‘When you are a captain, when you are the leader, what do your players see? Is he playing for himself? Or is he trying to set an example as to how one should play for a team?’ Laxman asks rhetorically. ‘And when they can see that whatever you are doing is for the team, you don’t have to tell them anything after that.’
This excerpt from R Kaushik’s ‘The Rise of the Hitman: The Rohit Sharma Story’ has been published with permission from Rupa Publications India.