Can skipper Rohit find inspiration to ‘pull’ his side out of the numbing depths?

As he made the long walk across the Wankhede Stadium playing area, from the Indian dressing-room to the media conference hall located at the northern end of the ground, Rohit Sharma cut a lonely figure. In every sense of the term. Walking a distance away from the BCCI’s media team, he cast one (distasteful?) final look at the 22-yard surface that had etched his name in the record books for all the wrong reasons.

He then put his head down, as if counting the blades of the grass on the outfield. Perhaps, the events of the last several months flitted before his eyes like a film on loop – the fabulous charge to the final of the 50-over home World Cup that ended in utter heartbreak last November. The wonderful march to the T20 World Cup trophy in Bridgetown in June, India’s first global crown since 2013. And, definitely, the unexpected, ignominious 0-3 lashing at home against New Zealand, formalised just a few minutes earlier, which made Rohit’s team not just the first to lose a Test series at home in 12 years but also the first Indian side to lose all matches in a three-Test-or-more series.

The turning ball

Rohit must have wondered how things had come to this pass. And immediately hit upon the answer. The turning ball.

The turning ball was once India’s ally. India has had the spinners, of course, forever, to exploit the assistance from the surface. It also had batters who could play that offering without a care in the world. A little skip down the track, maybe a deep backward dive to use the depth of the crease, a twirl of the wrist here, an opening of the bat-face there. Spinners of all hue and quality were driven to desperation. Their best ball was met with a dead bat or a scything willow, depending on whether Rahul Dravid was in the middle or Mohammad Azharuddin. Batters thought little of playing across the turn – not in hope or optimism but with the conviction that the cherry didn’t hold too much threat.

Stuart MacGill, he who out-bowled the great Shane Warne when both leg-spinners played in tandem in the Australian Test side, was asked on India’s 2003-04 tour of Australia if he felt the Indian batters could read him off the hand. The Indian batters in question? Virender Sehwag. Dravid. Sachin Tendulkar. V.V.S. Laxman. Sourav Ganguly. MacGill chuckled self-deprecatingly and said something along the lines of, “I don’t know if they can read me or not. Actually, I don’t think they care what I am bowling, because no matter what, the ball invariably ends up speeding to the boundary.” This, from someone who had 12 five-fors in 44 Tests, 208 scalps with a wicket coming every nine overs. On Australian pitches, admittedly, but just an honest and frank acknowledgement of being schooled by proven masters.

What Rohit wouldn’t give to have a few of these worthies under his command. Or now, what wouldn’t Rohit give to wind the clock back three weeks and rethink his decision at the toss in Bengaluru, a decision that has played a significant part in where Indian Test cricket stands today.

The last three weeks have been particularly harsh on Rohit. Just a month back, the whole world was marvelling at the audacity and aggression of India’s batters, who lashed the fastest team 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 in Test history in a bid to make up for the loss of 235 overs over the first three days of the second Test against Bangladesh in Kanpur. Rohit was at the forefront of that assault, racing down the track to clatter Khaled Ahmed over long-on for six, his first ball. The next was shorter and pulled over deep mid-wicket for another six. Rohit only made 23 but his 11-ball stay set the tone for India’s furious rate of scoring – 8.22 runs per over for 34.4 overs.

Coming up short

Rohit attempted to reprise those tactics against New Zealand and came up short. More than once. After shockingly opting to bat in the most pacer-friendly conditions ever on offer in India, he ran down the track to negate Tim Southee’s swing with an attacking stroke and was bowled off stump. On Sunday (November 4), with India needing 147 to salvage a consolation win in a series already lost, he tried to smite Matt Henry over mid-wicket with his signature pull, but the ball wasn’t short enough and he put up a catch that Glenn Phillips, arguably the best all-round fielder in the world today, pouched back-pedalling with effortless ease.

Like he had in Bengaluru when he took complete responsibility for the decision at the toss, Rohit put his hand up after the Mumbai capitulation – India were shot out for 121 in 29.1 overs, another remarkable low in a series full of debilitating lows – and admitted that he had let himself and his team down. As captain and leader, he said, but also as batter. He was only stating the obvious. In six innings, his returns were a meagre 91. Throw in the four knocks against Bangladesh which brought him 42 runs, and in this home season, he aggregated 133 Test runs at 13.30, average 13.30. Only England’s Nasser Hussain has a lesser average (10.22) by a captain in a home Test season.

Rohit has been dismissed attacking, he has been dismissed defending. He has fallen to pace, he has perished to spin. Most damningly, he has survived 20 balls just once in these 10 outings. It has to be a huge low for a batter who defied predictions and batted time as if he were born to do so on the tour of England in 2021. In eight innings during the four Tests, the fewest balls he faced was 27 at The Oval. Only two other times did he last less than 40 deliveries; his other five stints spanned 107, 145, 105, 156 and 256 respectively, the last of them helping him to his first century outside India.

Disarmingly honest when asked if he had lost faith in his defence, he said with a wry smile, “I haven’t defended a lot in this series because I haven’t been there much (long enough) to defend. I have to look at my own game and try and see what best I can do. I don’t see that I have lost faith in my defence. It’s just that I need to spend more time defending balls, which I haven’t done in this series. I accept that I haven’t batted well.”

Early enforcer

Rohit takes great pride in setting an example, in leading from the front, in commanding his team’s commitment to a cause by not asking them to do anything that he himself wouldn’t. Or doesn’t. In both white-ball World Cups, he was the early enforcer, taking the bull by the horns time after time and for sustained spells. With the captain putting the money where his mouth was, how could the rest not follow suit? It must have stung, badly, that having set such lofty standards not so long back, he wasn’t able to live up to them in home comfort. As the two most senior batters in a Test line-up otherwise still in its early days, the onus was on Rohit and Virat Kohli to set stall and allow the younger guns to blossom in their wake. Unfortunately from India’s standpoint, the two pedigreed superstars managed just 184 runs in 16 innings between them, a crippling blow from which even multiple acts of brilliance from Rishabh Pant could not rescue the team.

India’s chances of qualifying for the final of the World Test Championship now hang by a slender thread after the Kiwi pummelling. They can still make the title round for a third cycle in a row on their own steam, but that will mean winning the five-Test series in Australia by a 4-0 margin or better. Notwithstanding the fact that they have triumphed gloriously in their last two series Down Under, India have never won more than two Tests in a series in that country. To win a minimum of four is the tallest of orders, especially given India’s current state of mind and the beating their confidence must have taken over the last three weeks.

Rohit is certain to miss at least one of the first two Tests, most likely the opener in Perth, for personal reasons. If he does link up with the side ahead of the second Test, he will walk straightaway into a pink-ball game in Adelaide; it was in the corresponding fixture four years back that India were rolled over for 36 in their second innings, their lowest Test score to date. Coming off 46 all out in Bengaluru last month, that might not be the most ideal setting to ease back into Test cricket, but by his own admission, Rohit has seen more lows than highs throughout his career, faced more challenges than most others and has lived to tell the tale, so it’s just possible that he will be energised by the daunting challenge.

Pitches in Australia should encourage Rohit’s strong back-foot play. Few batters anywhere in the world pull with greater authority, command and control than India’s captain and while the pull might have caused his downfall many times – like the famed square-cut did the legendary Gundappa Viswanath’s – he is very much in the blue in the risk vs reward stakes. But can he use that stroke effectively enough to pull his side – pardon the horrible pun — out of the numbing depths to which it has plunged?