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Follow UsRohit Sharma's Test career is a Shakespearean tragedy, with a really solid middle act preceded and succeeded by stinky first and third acts full of injuries, controversies, missed chances, and egotistical powerplays.
It's Indian cricket's loss as much as Rohit’s as his Test career seems grimly rushing towards its end. It feels like another case of what could have been if you think about the peak he showed as a Test opener and his early promise in the late 2000s while starting his international career.
However, to just focus on the tragedies because of the current vibe against him is not only underplaying his achievements as a batter but also doing injustice to the perseverance and adaptability he has shown through his Test career.
Hence, beginning and going sequentially is crucial while revisiting his career in the longest format.
When it all began with a false start
Not long after that, he was also dropped for the 2011 ODI World Cup. This was one of the worst phases of Rohit’s career, and that missed debut opportunity is the “biggest disappointment” of his life in his own words.
A dazzling debut
Rohit finally debuted against the West Indies in 2013 during the Sachin Tendulkar farewell series. He was spectacular in the two innings he played in the series and scored a ton in both, coming in at number six in the batting order.
With his ODI stocks rising rapidly after becoming an opener the same year, it finally felt like Rohit’s career had taken the express train after trodding along at a sluggish pace in its beginning.
A middling middle-order career
Sadly, Rohit's bedazzled beginning in Test cricket proved to be beginner’s luck, as he could score only one Test century in almost six years between December 2013 and September 2019.
In the process, he played 45 innings and scored 1297 runs at a mediocre average of 33.26 while averaging 60.57 as an opener in ODI cricket at almost a run a ball. The contrast was inexplicable for many people.
The only thing people could point to was his batting position. He batted at number six in 23 of those 45 innings and never got to open despite being India’s main white-ball opener.
The Test opener wakes up
It took him six years to open the Test innings for India, and boy, did he make it count!
Batting at the top against South Africa in Visakhapatnam in October 2019, he smashed two daddy hundreds (176, 127) and a double hundred (212) in just four innings.
He was so dominant in the series that Dane Piedt and Faf du Plessis probably still have nightmares about bowling to him all day. Meanwhile, the Indian Test setup couldn’t be happier. They finally had an opener who looked adamant about making the opportunity count.
One of the best openers in the world
Between 2019 and April 2024, Rohit scored 2552 runs in 54 innings at an average of 50.04. Among all openers worldwide who have opened the innings at least 25 times, only Dimuth Karunaratne had a better average (52.7) in this period.
The best series in this period was the England one in 2021, where he scored 490 runs in just six innings at an average of 44.55, with a highest score of 127. His work on his defence and developing a batting tempo for Test cricket was working wonders for him.
Rohit Sharma’s skipper era begins
From being unable to find a fixed spot for himself in the batting order to becoming India’s skipper in 2022 — Rohit’s Test career had turned around like a merry-go-round.
In this period, he showed his class on home pitches quite a bit, scoring a blistering century on a turner in Nagpur against Australia. In the 2024 home series against England, he scored 131 in Rajkot and 103 in Dharamshala as India won the five-Test series 4-1.
The curious case of injuries
Calf injury in February 2020, hamstring Injury in October 2020 (that kept him out of the first two Border Gavaskar Trophy Tests in 2020/21), another hamstring injury in December 2021, and finally Covid infection that ruled him out from the rescheduled Test in England in July 2022 -- all these injuries in the last four years have ensured that despite being one of the top openers in the world in this period, he played only two innings in South Africa, where India needed him badly. Besides that, India also missed their skipper's services in many white-ball games.
A Test career that had a false start because of an injury never really stopped being hindered by injuries. That would always remain one of the biggest asterisks on Rohit’s run in the longest format.
12 saal me ek baar….
“It’s fine if it happens once in 12 years”
That was roughly what skipper Rohit said after India suffered their biggest humiliation in home Tests after New Zealand clean swept them. India’s 12-year streak of winning home Test series fell like a pack of cards.
And suddenly, after the shambolic performance and the lackadaisical statement, Rohit’s days suddenly turned grim again. As it turned out, the third act of his Test career had begun, and it wasn’t moving towards a happy end.
When all was lost
It didn’t have to end the way it did. It didn’t have to come to the Indian skipper being dropped after his team was lagging 2-1 behind. However, a sharp decline in batting form combined with questionable captaincy decisions on the field created such a toxic cocktail that it's highly probable that Rohit ‘hit man’ Sharma has already played the last Test of his career.
