Cricket World Cup: Like Nadal on clay, Rohit Sharma finds comfort zone on red soil even as others struggle | Cricket-world-cup News

Watching Rohit Sharma batting on a low and slow surface is like savouring a master at the height of his powers, in familiar conditions. Rohit, on red soil, conducive to spinners, unboxes the range of shots that very few in this Indian team and probably in the world can match. It is like watching Rafael Nadal move around and dominate opponents on clay.
In the World Cup so far, he has taken on every bowler, but conditions and the match situation in Lucknow mandated a change of attitude. Rohit had to display his mental toughness, letting go of the ego, playing the waiting game, and feasting on the makes of the opposition.
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In front of a packed Ekana Stadium, with wickets tumbling at the other end, Rohit showed again why he is best suited to such circumstances. Rohit was resplendent on Sunday afternoon during his 87 off 101 balls against England. Unlike the previous games, where he used to bully the bowlers from the first over, he waited.
It took Rohit eight balls to get into his stride. David Willey, who started with a maiden, faced the heat in his second over. Rohit walked down the track and cleared mid-on to get going. It was followed the trademark Rohit Sharma pull shot over deep mid-wicket. The best was saved for the last ball of the over, when he again danced down the track and hit straight over Willey’s head. In all, 18 runs came from Willey’s second over, the most expensive of the innings.
Rohit saw Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and later, KL Rahul throwing their wickets away. Gill and Iyer were undone their weaknesses, whereas Kohli and Rahul fell to soft dismissals, while giving Willey the charge. In the 14th over of the match, Rohit showed how it is done when he skipped down the track and hit Chris Woakes, who was probably bowling his best ODI spell in India, over mid-on for a boundary.
At home on tough surface
He reached his 50 off 66 balls, his slowest of the tournament. But right after reaching the landmark, Rohit left Mark Wood and England stunned with a pick-up shot over fine leg. On a dodgy surface, Rohit used his feet excellently against the seamers but it was against spinners that he showed his great prowess. Instead of trying to dominate them, he used his dexterity. There was an inside-out shot over cover against Adil Rashid, a reverse-sweep and a late-cut against Liam Livingstone. Probably the best shot of his innings came in the 29th over against the latter when Rohit danced down the track, reached the pitch of the ball, used his wrs and chipped it over mid-wicket for a boundary.
However, in many ways, it was a very uncharacteric knock from Rohit. He started slowly, hit the fourth gear and with England bowlers not giving an inch, toned down from his Ferrari to a Fiat, but looked totally in control.
Rohit has a century in this World Cup but with this knock, he has again shown how far he has travelled as a batsman since he was asked to open the innings in white-ball cricket in 2013.Most Read
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He was always rated highly. A couple of years back, Kohli, in a delightful interview with host Gaurav Kapur on the ‘Breakfast with Champions’ show, had spoken about how after watching Rohit’s batting in the 2007 ICC World T20 left him in awe.
“I was curious because everyone was talking about this player called Rohit Sharma. I was very curious because I was also a young player, but nobody was talking about me. Then during the T20 World Cup (2007), I saw him bat, and I just slumped on the sofa. That shut my mouth forever.”
Over the years, Rohit has stunned fans, the pundits and teammates with his stroke-play in the white-ball format, but the knock in Lucknow was more Rohit, the Test batsman, than the high-risk opener in the game’s shorter versions.