‘Just a matter of time before he makes hundred’: Michael Clarke bats for Rohit Sharma to find form | Ipl News
Former Australian skipper Michael Clarke on Thursday said that Rohit Sharma just needs a decent knock of 40 in order to find rhythm in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) season. The former MI captain is in a lean patch of form, scoring just 38 runs in the 4 matches he has played thus far.
“I think Rohit’s an absolute superstar. It’s just a matter of time before he makes (a) hundred. I think it’s going to take one decent innings. It might be a 40, it might be a 60,” Clarke said on JioHotstar.
“He’ll get momentum and then, you know, you’ll see the best of Rohit Sharma. I wouldn’t be too concerned about his form. We all have high expectations of the great players because they’ve been so successful over a long period of time that, yeah, you’re allowed to miss out on a couple of games. But class is permanent,” he added.
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In IPL 2024, Rohit had decent overall numbers of 417 runs in 14 matches at a strike rate of 150, but those stats get skewed the 105* off 63 balls he scored at the Wankhede Stadium against CSK (plus another 68 in the last match of the league phase as MI finished last).
Between those two knocks, his scores last year read: 36, 6, 8, 4, 11, 4, 19. A year further back, in IPL 2023, 332 runs at a strike rate of 132.8 and in 2022, it was further down at 268 runs at 120.18. There is a sufficient case to be made for the fact that he has not been in good batting form for MI over the course of a full season, for a while now. Also, Rohit has crossed the 400 runs tally only once in the last nine years of the Indian Premier League.
Last week, Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar said there was a cause for concern. “He is clearly going through a phase,” Manjrekar was quoted as saying to JioStar after MI’s 2nd match. “He’s not the Rohit Sharma of, say, three to four years ago. He’s at a stage in his career where he has to push himself every morning – train hard and be at his best – because things are slipping away for him. He’s still relying on his natural talent and instincts.”
