Rohit has shown himself to be a true leader of men

K.L. Rahul’s gigantic six off Glenn Maxwell on Tuesday night was significant for more reasons than one.

Not only did it formalise India’s entry into the final of the Champions Trophy for the fifth time in the tournament’s history — and the third time on the bounce — it also thrust Rohit Sharma into the leadership stratosphere.

Less than three years after taking over as India’s all-format captain, from Virat Kohli, Rohit has become the first skipper to take his side to the final of all four ICC tournaments — the World Test Championship, the 50-over World Cup, the T20 World Cup and now this competition, which has been revived after eight years.

It’s a phenomenal record for someone who, as recently as in October 2019, wasn’t sure where his red-ball career was headed.

Test opener

Kohli and then head coach Ravi Shastri’s decision to promote Rohit to open the Test batting has turned out to be a masterstroke. Twin centuries in his maiden avatar as opener against South Africa in Visakhapatnam wasn’t a false dawn, unlike centuries in his first two Tests against West Indies in November 2013. Despite his recent travails at home against New Zealand and in Australia, Rohit continues to be a feared and respected Test opener, especially for the self-discipline and self-denial he assiduously incorporated in his game during the tour of England in 2021.

Rohit has shown himself to be a true leader of men. Long before his ascension to the Indian captaincy throne on his own steam — he had weighed in as limited-overs skipper on and off from December 2017, whenever Kohli wasn’t available — he had showcased his credentials with Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League. Taking over mid-season from a misfiring Ricky Ponting in 2013, Rohit led his team to their maiden title that same year, then backed it up with further successes in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020, when he became the first captain since M.S. Dhoni in 2011 to successfully defend the crown.

By the time the Indian captaincy came to him, Rohit was ready. He had served nearly a decade of apprenticeship, if that’s what it was, in the contours of franchise cricket, where managing superstars and superstar egos is potentially more demanding and trickier than within the national set-up, where the captain generally has the lie of the land.

In getting big names from different parts of the world to pull in the same direction and plug for a common cause without rancour or backbiting was a great tick in the box for Rohit. It’s worth remembering that when he became the MI captain in the middle of 2013, he had yet to make his Test debut and was just about finding his feet in the two white-ball formats, in stark contrast to Dhoni, who had already clinched the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007 in his first outing as the India skipper.

This isn’t a comparison between the two pedigreed leaders; in this instance, Rohit and Dhoni are invoked in the same breath only because both have five IPL crowns in their leadership kitty. Rohit brings great value in various different spheres, but none of them has had greater ramifications than the felicity with which he has got the various personnel that have played with and under him to buy into the concept of team ahead of self.

For eons, Indian cricket or at least a reasonable majority of the players and the entire fan-following, without exception, tended to focus on individual milestones, perhaps because they didn’t trust the team enough to be consistently competitive around the globe and across formats. A Sachin Tendulkar hundred was acceptable — not to Tendulkar himself, mind — even if India lost; an Indian win was a bonus. Tendulkar might not have subscribed to that theory but some of the lesser mortals had one eye on their individual performances at a time when one or two failures were enough to usher them out of contention even if the competition for places wasn’t anywhere near as intense as it has become now.

That fear of failure has now been comprehensively exploded. Players don’t go out after a solitary failure or two, which explains why in the last three years, hardly anyone has played just one Test or an isolated limited-overs international.

Rohit was fortunate that at the beginning of his captaincy tenure, he had a kindred soul in Rahul Dravid for company, as head coach. During his stint as Indian captain between 2005 and 2007, Dravid was extremely successful. In one of those unfortunate but unavoidable scenarios, his inability to lead India past the first stage of the 2007 50-over World Cup in the Caribbean will always dog his legacy as captain. As dispiriting as that was, it shouldn’t be forgotten that it was under Dravid that India won their first Test series in the West Indies in 35 years (in 2006), registered their first Test win in South Africa (also in 2006) and ended a 26-year wait for a series victory in England (in 2007). It was also under Dravid that India went from a fumbling, uncertain chasing unit in ODIs to stacking up a record 16 consecutive successful chases, all of which have been reduced to footnotes when viewed against the prism of the World Cup disaster.

United front

Dravid and Rohit weren’t always on the same page — it is impossible for two strong individuals to agree on everything — but when they had differing opinions, as opposed to differences of opinion, they thrashed them out in private so that when they emerged in public, they sang from the same hymn sheet.

That revolved around continuity in personnel, strategies, game plans, attitudes, mindsets and style of play. There was no knee-jerk reaction to every failure, no desperate chopping and changing, no pressing of the panic button. It sparked a feeling of security within the set-ups, and any professional sportsperson worth their salt will tell you how much of a comforting factor that is. The onus was on commitment and effort, in the conviction that if the players gave it their everything, they would get plenty in return. More often than not, that was the case. The fact that India have tided over potentially game-changing decision-making — such as the call to move on from the Cheteshwar Pujara-Ajinkya Rahane era in Test cricket — speaks to the strength of the Indian domestic structure.

For all the headlines, attention and envy that the Indian Premier League generates, a vast proportion of those playing domestic cricket still are attracted to the tugs and pulls and charms and vagaries of the red-ball game. Fears that Test cricket might suffer at the altar of the T20 game, specifically, have proved unfounded, both from a playing and viewing perspective. Even when New Zealand were running rings around India in October-November, good crowds populated the stands in Bengaluru, Pune and Mumbai, surprising several who believed audiences came only to watch cricketers, not cricket.

The insistence of the BCCI on internationals playing domestic cricket as and when they aren’t on national duty is bound to raise the profile and increase the standard of the game at the state vs state level while keeping the internationals on their toes and refamiliarising themselves with the art of playing decent spin on turning tracks.

The spin factor

If there is one area where the need for exponential improvement is a non-negotiable, it is in India’s approach against spin and one is sure that’s something Rohit and head coach Gautam Gambhir are well seized of.

Where India’s seamless transition has been most overwhelmingly apparent is in the 20-over format. Rohit, Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja all announced their retirement from that version internationally within hours of the World Cup triumph at the Kensington Oval; with due respect to this proven trio, they haven’t really been missed. That’s thanks to the great depth in Indian cricket, bolstered undoubtedly by the IPL where young guns with starry ambitions are able to pick the brains of some of the greatest contemporary names.

India have been exceptional in T20 cricket in the eight months since the World Cup success, with the scramble for places manic and several of the performances surreal. Abhishek Sharma is the prime, but not only, example of being in the right place at the right time and making the most of the opportunities that come their way. Their recent annihilation of England suggests that the future of Indian T20 cricket is in young but very safe hands.

Since the beginning of 2019, India have registered Test series wins in Australia (twice), the West Indies (twice) and Bangladesh, and drawn in South Africa and England; their losses have come in New Zealand, South Africa and in Australia this year, while at home, they were unbeaten for 12 years until the Kiwis snapped that run in November.

They made the semifinal of the 2019 50-over World Cup and went one better four years later, while in T20 World Cups, they lost in the semifinal in Adelaide to England in 2022 before going all the way last June. They made the finals of the first two World Test Championships before their campaign fell flat in Cycle Three with six losses in their last eight Tests.

At the time of writing, India are ranked No. 3 in Tests, and No. 1 in both limited-overs formats. They are within one win of becoming the first team to lift the Champions Trophy thrice. Their brand of cricket is exciting and enthralling, designed to entertain as much as to win though unlike England with their ‘Bazball’, entertainment doesn’t come at the expense of victory. Their financial power is, of course, the envy of the cricketing world, but undermine their cricketing riches at your own peril.