Chappell Uses Graeme Hick to Make a Case for Rohit Sharma in Test Cricket
Sreelata Yellamrazu: Rohit Sharma showed briefly during the tour match ahead of the India England ODI series that he was unlucky to have missed out on selection earlier on the tour. However, he is not the only one who believes his time has come. Rohit Sharma has been on the Sreelata Yellamrazu:
Rohit Sharma showed briefly during the tour match ahead of the India England ODI series that he was unlucky to have missed out on selection earlier on the tour. However, he is not the only one who believes his time has come.
Rohit Sharma has been on the mark as far as making a dash as a replacement for some of the more illustrious names in Indian batting. However, inconsistency of form as well as selection have meant that the young Indian batsman has had to maintain his patience while constantly working to improve his game. His recent opportunity did come on the tour of the West Indies and now fortuitous opportunity has come his way with a spate of injuries that will now the Indian cricket without the likes of Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan who were all a part of India’s ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 winning squad.
That Rohit Sharma has impressed on foreign shores was a given because he was rated rather highly by Australian commentators during the last Indian tour. However, it has not translated in Rohit Sharma earning the Test cap. In fact, Suresh Raina has beaten him to the race on the tour of Sri Lanka where Yuvraj Singh was injured and then left out to earn his pride back. Even during the England Test series, Yuvraj Singh was picked while Rohit Sharma was left back home.
Now Rohit Sharma has another opportunity to follow up on the tour of the West Indies to show that he is ready to take the next step. India do need to identify the players to groom and succeed once the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and V.V.S. Laxman decide to exit the stage, although the former two have rarely shown the intention to do so. Rohit Sharma needs to take every opportunity he can get to not only make improvements but signal his readiness for the Indian selectors to be imprinted with the idea that Rohit Sharma is indeed the future.
Ian Chappell, the former Australian captain, certainly thinks that Rohit Sharma requires serious consideration. It should give Rohit Sharma a great deal of strength knowing that Chappell believes Rohit Sharma is far more talented than Raina to have been pipped to the Test cap. However, Chappell is of the opinion that time should not be wasted in terms of grooming Rohit Sharma to do the job on a more regular basis. Sourav Ganguly had recently complained that since his retirement the Indian selectors have failed to find a suitable replacement and are still struggling to fill that one role alone, leave alone the rest.
Chappell makes a strong point in the favour of Rohit Sharma by using England’s Graeme Hick as a point of reference. Chappell is of the opinion that Hick failed to be quite as successful in international cricket as he was in domestic cricket to score 100 first class hundreds because Hick was allowed to stalemate in domestic cricket to the extent that by the time Hick was given a longer run in the England cricket team, the time had caused Hick to sacrifice some of the technicality superiority he had to begin with.