Rohit Sharma’s abysmal form has raised enough questions for the Indian team management. Whether they act upon it needs to be seen.
If you are a regular on social media, you would have seen the posts by now. Of Rohit’s average being the worst for any touring captain in a series in Australia. Of the “contest” between his runs and Jasprit Bumrah’s wickets. Of him having faced fewer balls than Scott Boland in the series. Of his run of scores that date back to the start of the New Zealand series.
Maybe social media is not your thing. You would still have seen him struggle in Australia. However hard you try, you would have found it difficult to defend 31 runs from 110 balls across five innings. Stretch it to the New Zealand series at home and you get 122 runs in 11 innings. Include the Bangladesh series and you get 164 in 15 for the season. He has simply not scored runs.
Rohit had opened against Bangladesh and New Zealand. India used KL Rahul at the top with Yashasvi Jaiswal when Rohit missed the Perth Test, opening batting in his absence at Perth. When he reached Australia, Rohit dropped down to six to accommodate Rahul – a decision not many Indian captains would have taken.
Unfortunately, it bore no fruit. Rahul impressed, but Rohit made 3 and 6 as India lost at Adelaide. India did draw at Brisbane (Rohit made 10), but there was little doubt that Australia were the better side. Rohit’s defence was dissected. India dropped Gill at Melbourne. Rohit scored 3 and 9, and India lost again. The criticism was not restricted to fans.
Form, you may say. It can happen to anyone. There is truth in that. Fifteen innings may seem a lot, but not even four months separate the first day of the Bangladesh series and the last day of the Australia tour. Greater cricketers have struggled over a period this brief.
All that is true. And yet...
Two fundamental principles
The first principle is simple. You need to take 20 wickets to win a Test match. For that, you need to pick your best possible bowling attack. In Australia, that amounts to picking your best fast bowlers.
In Bumrah, India boast of the greatest in contemporary cricket. Mohammed Siraj has had his low phases and critics, but his 2024-25 tour figures (16 wickets at 31.43) are not significantly inferior to those from his famous maiden tour of Australia, in 2020-21 (13 wickets at 29.53). He was forced to step up as the spearhead of the attack back then. This time, as the support to Bumrah, he has just about been par.
The problem begins after that. Akash Deep, in his first year of Test cricket, has been incisive but unlucky. Harshit Rana, who debuted in this series, has impressed in short bursts but little more. Between them, they have been unable to become the third fast bowler India needed.
It is not their fault per se. Ordinary maiden tours can happen to inexperienced fast bowlers. To counter that, India could have bolstered their attack with a fourth fast bowler. Instead, they chose to consolidate their batting.
Thus, at Melbourne, they went in with Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, and Ravindra Jadeja. Six bowlers and eight batters look good on paper, but in reality, the bowling attack consisted of two frontline pacers, a support pacer, and three bowlers who had little impact given the conditions – all in an attempt to minimise the count of tail-enders.
It may seem that Reddy and Sundar, with their massive stand in the first innings, had justified the decision. They indeed kept India in the Test for longer than it had seemed. Unfortunately, they did what they did after India had conceded 474 in the first innings of the Test. In all Test cricket, there have been 417 instances of teams scoring at least as much as that in the first innings: they had won 214 and lost only 15.
By deliberately depleting their bowling attack, India allowed to be as good as batted out of the Test match by the second morning. Whatever they did from there was little more than defending. The lack of bowling depth was exposed yet again on the fourth day, when Australia recovered from 91-6 and 173-9 to reach 234.
To win at Sydney, India must field another fast bowler. For that, they need to leave out one of Jadeja and Sundar and bring in – not a batter, that will not solve the problem – but a specialist fast bowler. In other words, they have to continue playing four specialist batters (five, if you include Reddy) and the keeper.
That brings us to the second principle, of a team choosing its best XI for every Test. While it seems simple, underperforming captains end up complicating things. While captains do add value to a unit, it is often not enough to counter wretched form.
By replacing the in-form Rahul at the top, Rohit altered one of the very few things that had worked for the Indian batting unit on this tour. Come Sydney, it is logical for him to reinstate Rahul. Jaiswal, too, selects himself.
Rohit should not make it.
What about Kohli? And indeed, Gill?
It is time to address the elephant in the room. True, Rohit is not an automatic choice in the XI anymore: but is Virat Kohli, or for that matter, Shubman Gill?
Unlike Rohit (average 24.38, never reached 70), Kohli (average 49, seven hundreds) actually has a terrific record in Australia, and has even made a hundred on this tour. The records of the two are not comparable in the format.
In fact, Rohit averages 28.17 from 25 Tests across the four “SENA” countries. Take his truly exceptional English summer of 2021 away, and it drops to 23.22. He does not have a hundred outside that summer either. Kohli might not be the behemoth he used to between 2016 and 2019, but his “SENA” average still stands 42.22. He has had his problems, but between the two, he has been the superior bat – and not merely now.
Gill’s “SENA” numbers (26.72, no hundred) do not make great reading either. However, he has failed only once in his three innings on this tour, and probably got a raw deal. He can also boast of two things that Rohit cannot. One, he had an exceptional tour of Australia under his belt, back in 2020-21. And two, he is 12 years younger.
Several Indian batters have underperformed on this tour, but among them, Rohit’s case to retain a spot is the weakest. Had he not been the captain, he would have been the first to be dropped. Additionally, by playing, he will either replace the in-form Rahul at the top or bat out of position, at three or six.
Can you drop a captain?
“If he were not the captain, he might not be playing right now,” said Irfan Pathan. “You would have had a set team. KL Rahul would have been playing at the top. Jaiswal would have been there. Shubman Gill would have been there”.
While there is perhaps merit in these words, Rohit is the captain, and dropping a captain is a bolder move than leaving out anyone else. While dropping an underperforming captain is logical, it seldom happens mid-tour – partly because the captain is almost always part of the decision-making committee.
It will, however, not be a first. As with many things, the most remarkable instance involves WG Grace. The sluggish movements of the former champion athlete – well past his prime by 1899 – were booed by the Trent Bridge crowd. So he dropped himself, and never played for England again.
Mike Denness had a horror run of 6, 27, 2, 20, 8, 2 during the 1974-75 Ashes. Team morale ran low. The British media tore him apart. On tour, he received an envelope with only “Mike Denness, Cricketer” written on it. “If this letter reaches you, the post office think more of you than I do,” ran the contents. Denness dropped himself (though he returned after John Edrich was injured).
Other, more recent instances are from the shorter formats. Dinesh Chandimal dropped himself from the semi-final and the final of the 2014 T20 World Cup that Sri Lanka eventually won. And Misbah-ul-Haq “opted to rest himself after a lean run of scores” from the third ODI against Australia in 2014-15 – “an unprecedented move for Pakistan”, to quote the Wisden Almanack.
The end of this year’s MCG Test coincided with a monumental decision ten years ago, when MS Dhoni, the Indian Test captain, retired during the 2014-15 Australia tour. When Rohit made his way to the press conference room on Monday, many wondered if something similar would transpire. Twenty-four hours since, there has been no such announcement.
Whether Rohit does a Dhoni ahead of Sydney is up to him. Perhaps he will. Or perhaps he will back himself one more time at Sydney. If he chooses the latter, India will not field their best possible XI in the decider.
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