During MI’s home clash against Rajasthan Royals on April 30, Sandeep Sharma dismissed Rohit Sharma for the fifth time in the IPL. Sandeep is not the only bowler to have dominated the Indian captain in the league.
A decade and a half is a fairly long time. Even the greatest batters would not have the best numbers against some bowlers, however small the sample may be.
Rohit is a batter of exceptional calibre, and is expected to dominate Sandeep, who generates neither pace nor bounce. You would be forgiven for thinking that Rohit would take him down without much fuss – but he he rarely has. And he did not last night (April 30) either.
Rohit could not pick the knuckle-ball and played all around it, and fell to Sandeep for the fifth time in the IPL. Only five other bowlers have dismissed him as many or more times in IPL. Here’s a look at a few of Rohit’s most negative matchups in IPL history.
7 dismissals – Sunil Narine & Amit Mishra
Narine and Mishra have dismissed Rohit most often in the IPL. While his duel with Narine is well-documented, given their annual clashes at the IPL, his clashes with Mishra seems to have slipped under the radar as the latter has not played much in the last few years.
Rohit has managed 141 runs against Narine in 19 innings, averaging 20.1 and striking at 110. While he has hit him for the odd boundary (a four every eight balls), he has rarely been able to dominate him. From 128 balls, he has hit only two sixes.
His record against Mishra is worse, 87 runs in 17 innings at an average of 12.4 and a strike rate of 96, with only two fours and three sixes.
6 dismissals – R Vinay Kumar
This might just be the most surprising matchup Rohit Sharma has had in his IPL career. Vinay Kumar, the former India right-arm pacer and a domestic legend, has bowled to Rohit in six matches and has dismissed him every time.
Off the 33 balls Rohit faced off him, he could score only 22 runs and has fallen six times: the average reads 3.67 and strike rate 67. All these six dismissals came between 2008 and 2013.
5 dismissals – Sandeep Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Dwayne Bravo
Sandeep, Umesh, and Bravo have all dismissed Rohit five times each in the IPL, yet each of them has a distinct record against him.
Umesh has gone for runs along with the five dismissals. Rohit averages 30.4 and strikes at 141 against him. The five dismissals, thus, are more down to the longevity of the contest between these two than any significant upper hand on the part of the bowler.
Rohit has played both for and against Bravo. In the contests, he has struggled but managed to scratch some runs out, with the five dismissals coming at an average of 16.4 and a strike rate of 114. Against Sandeep, the corresponding numbers read 7.6 and 86, for he has scored only 38 runs from 44 balls.
4 dismissals – Siddharth Trivedi and Dhawal Kulkarni
Two underrated right-arm pace bowlers, Trivedi and Kulkarni, have had the better of Rohit as well.
Trivedi, a crucial key of the Rajasthan Royals outfit in the early years of the IPL, dismissed Rohit four times in nine innings, averaging 11.25 per dismissal as Rohit scored at a rate of 118.
Rohit fared slightly better against Kulkarni – he has struck at 155 – but he lost his wicket four times in the pursuit of runs and has ended up with an average of 16.25 against him.
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