World Cup: How a change of habit and grip, all himself, transformed Rohit Sharma’s game | Cricket-world-cup News

As the sun went down, the world’s biggest cricket stadium was lit up not just floodlights or the flash cameras from over one lakh smartphones in the stands. It was fueled Rohit Sharma’s bedazzling brilliance. Pakan were blinded, the fans, who have come from across the country in flights, special trains, G-paying exorbitant amounts to hotels, were wowed as India cantered to a seven-wicket win.Of all the splendorous maximums, a lofted straight six off Haris Rauf stood out for its gorgeous violence. It’s the weirdest thing to note about an opening batsman, but Rohit Sharma has the most delightful lofted straight drive in the world. The lingering visual is how the shot ends: hands gliding through the line and flicking up as if he had picked his daughter and tossed her gently in the air as fathers do.
Nothing he told recently to The Indian Express came easily. He admitted that pretty early in his life, he knew he had the ‘talent’ and a game that’s easy on the eye, but also knew it’s a meaningless word without performance.

He says he made two crucial tweaks to his batting – on his own, without any help from anyone. The first came early in the international arena when he decided to stop tapping his bat in the crease. It’s a sight that many might have forgotten, but Rohit would crouch and go tap, tap tap. The front leg would trespass across into areas of trouble, exposing him to a couple of huge problems: the awry balance meant he was getting squared up for the away-going deliveries, and also falling over triggering an lbw threat to nipbackers. As an opener in white-ball, he couldn’t have either of the two problems, especially from the away-going sorties.
Thinker, analyst
His solution to the twin problem was to stand with a raised-bat at stance. “No one told me, it was my creation. I figured that out when I began to open the batting. I thought keeping the bat up gives me an opportunity to be in a good position to leave balls first. I was batting at number 5, where I didn’t get the opportunity to leave the ball. So even at nets, I was only practising constantly to hit the ball. Even in Ranji Trophy I used to bat at 4-5, and had trained myself to be a middle order batsman,” he told The Indian express before the World Cup.

“When I began to open, I thought about what I could do. The first thing that came to my mind was the ball will swing and the guys will try to get you out behind the stumps. LBW is also there. I had to find a way to keep out the good outswingers. I kept thinking what can I do? Keeping the bat up allowed me to be in a good position to leave the ball. Earlier, when I used to keep my bat down I always used to feel that I had to play this ball. It was, what we batsmen call, a flow.”

The flow was buttery smooth on Saturday, the hands that held the bat carrying out his furious urges in a silken fashion. But to do all this, he had to first curb that excessive flow that was getting out of control. Watch him next time as the bowler is running in. Thud, thud thud – and he is still with a raised bat. Sometimes, as the bowler gets close to the umpire, Sharma might flex his knees, like a golfer. That’s about it. And that’s why the bowlers most successful are the ones who upset that balance at the crease, making him over-‘flow’.
Then in 2018 came the next change, triggered opening in Tests.
“It was in England I had to change my grip a little bit again to play very close to the body. It was a very technical thing. I never did it before; so it hurt your wr. I thought Jimmy Anderson was going to the ball, so he was going to get me out. What has he done all his life in the UK? What does he look to do? I thought about it. We had 15 days to prepare.”
So he cocked up his wr a touch that ever-so slightly shifted his grip – “and it pained! But now I could delay my downward bat swing even more and not commit myself like before. I could hold the bat in line with the moving ball,” Rohit told this newspaper.

Before England, he would move into the ambit of Ricky Ponting at the Mumbai Indians team in IPL – and he began to soak up nuggets on batting. “He is such a legend and it was great to talk about batting with him. They were mostly on basics, but it was good to hear from him – some things that validated what I was doing, and some things to remember. Balance is the key, really.”
“I had to figure out all these tweaks on my own as I was clear that I shouldn’t be expecting any help from anyone. The tough times I saw when I wasn’t picked for the 2011 World Cup and during the couple of bad tours that followed. I figured that it’s just my own battle and just thought it through.” The batting tweaks kicked in, the mental side of it strengthened, and as he often says these days, “solid preparation” puts him in a “happy space”.Most Read
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He certainly seemed in happy space when Shaheen Afridi curved his first ball full and on the middle and leg line. No self-doubts, no stutters – the bat rushed down smoothly to fling the ball towards square-leg boundary.

For a while now, Rohit Sharma has embraced minimalism in his batting. If the length or the line demands it, he flexes his upper body — stretches it, leans forward, arches back, reaches across, and bends his knees to do the needful. Rest, his still head and the flowing hands take care. Nothing twitches while at crease. The hands then flow, the bat swings down, the hip swivels, and he just creams through the line.
As if he was hitting a stationary ball. That’s the greatest visual trickery that Rohit achieves. Often, as it did on Saturday, it seems he isn’t confronting a ball speared at him rapidly that can land in varying lengths. It’s as if he is hitting a ball that lies still at a spot. Be it the pull, the lofted straight drive – it’s a unitary flowing sensuous movement. The Rohit Sharma show never ceases to satiate the senses despite numerous re-runs.