India have shown crackling form in white-ball cricket in the past few weeks. True, West Indies were disappointingly insipid and Sri Lanka appeared strangely overawed, yet nine wins on the trot (3 ODIs, 3 T20s v WI, 3 T20s v SL) is not a trifling stat.
Rohit’s vast experience and familiarity with players, old and new, was to his huge advantage (REUTERS)
If anything, West Indies and Sri Lanka were made to look wholly inadequate only because the Indian team played with aplomb, showing intent and ambition to go with talent. This was important for Indian cricket, looking to rebuild after some serious setbacks in the previous few months having flopped in the T20 World Cup then lost the Test and ODI series in South Africa.
There was also the clumsy transition of captaincy from Virat Kohli to Rohit Sharma creating an unsavoury and needless controversy which would have left—apart from fans and aficionados—even India’s players wondering what was going on.
Given this backdrop, the recent red-hot streak of wins has more merit than is acknowledged. True, India had the advantage of playing at home. But psychologically there was a great deal of lost ground to recover, which can’t be gauged from just scorecards.
Two things worked for India in this period. Rohit Sharma settling into the captaincy swiftly was a boon. If there were compunctions about how he would fare given the tensions accompanying his promotion, these were soon dispelled.
Rohit’s vast experience and familiarity with players, old and new, was to his huge advantage. When you are captain at 34-35—compared to 24-25— it can mean either more astute understanding of match situations and handling available resources or using power indiscriminately to make an instant impact.
Rohit has handled the assignment with assurance and authority so far. A new captain still has to win the trust and respect of players. Rohit was able to do this to get the best out of his team in virtually every match because the roles and KRAs for players was well-defined.
As a tactic, this stirred the aspirations and ambitions of individual players even further. So intense is the competition for places in the team presently that it willy-nilly raised the level of performances.
Regulars, comeback men, rookies, all clicked, and Indian cricket, which looked beleaguered not too long back now has multiple options for each place in the playing XI, creating a headache for the selectors, chief coach Rahul Dravid and Rohit. No one is complaining though!
The impending Test series against Sri Lanka poses a different challenge for Rohit, and by extension, all the players. While his credentials in white-ball cricket were lauded even before he became captain, Rohit has to prove himself in the five-day format.
Captaincy skills in red-ball cricket differ vastly from the other formats. How Rohit fares will be crucial not just to his stature but also to India’s fate in the World Test Championship where the team is languishing at No 5.
While Sri Lanka don’t look too strong on paper, they are currently heading the WTC points table. True, the parameters of computing WTC points make this ranking exercise quirky and volatile, but it is pertinent to bear in mind that the power matrix of Test cricket is going through a churn.
South Africa, for instance, hardly considered a threat in this format, beat No 1 ranked India a couple of months back and last week, fought back brilliantly to square the two-Test series against WTC champions New Zealand.
Given their precarious position, India will take Sri Lanka lightly at their peril if they aspire to reach the final. India have decided to go without Pujara and Rahane, two experienced stalwarts. K L Rahul, among the better performing batsmen, is absent too. This increases the onus on Rohit as batsman and captain.
The highlight of the first Test is that it will be Virat Kohli's hundredth, which brings the former captain into sharp focus. While several players have hit a century of Test appearances (he is the 12th Indian), this remains an important milestone as it reveals excellence and consistency over a long period of time, the hallmarks of a great cricketer.
Easily the world’s most compelling cricketer in the last decade and a fervent advocate of the primacy of the five-day format, for Kohli the 100th Test comes at a delicate time. He’s gone without a big score for over two years and restlessness over this is growing in Indian cricket circles.
Now bereft of protection that comes with captaincy, Kohli has to stymie skeptics as well as ward off lurking and latent threats to his place in the team by scoring big runs. This will be manifest in how he tackles the Sri Lankan bowling, but before that Kohli must first win the battle in his own mind.
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