Corridor of uncertainty: What does the future hold for Rohit and Virat?

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli's form in Test cricket has triggered intense debate. Do they have the zeal to stage a turnaround so late in their careers?

With a microphone in hand, Rohit Sharma delivered his most memorable performance in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia.

 

During a 15-minute interaction with Star Sports at the lunch break on day two of the Sydney Test, the 37-year-old extolled his selfless virtues and brushed off speculation about retirement.

 

“Life won’t change by what people with a mic, pen or laptop write or say. They won’t decide when we should retire, when we should sit out, or when we should captain. I am a sensible man, father of two kids. So I know what I need in life,” Indian Test team’s captain proclaimed.

 

Sharma is indeed a sensible man, and the decision to retire ultimately remains a personal one. But anyone who has watched him bat in the last six Tests will agree that he is a player past his prime. Since the Bengaluru Test against New Zealand last year, he has scored 122 runs in 11 innings. His defensive game has deserted him, he is abysmally low on confidence, and he lacks the mental fortitude for the rigours of long-form cricket. Sharma’s loss of form and captaincy status has been under intense scrutiny, especially after India’s 1-3 loss to Australia.

 

Like Sharma, Virat Kohli has done precious little with the bat on this ill-fated tour. Kohli, the modern-day batting great, has solutions to the most complex cricketing issues. But he had no answers to the deliveries outside his off-stump. On eight occasions in this series, he was caught fishing at deliveries in the corridor of uncertainty.

 

The recurrent theme in his mode of dismissal illustrates a deep-rooted technical deficiency that has left him and his fans exasperated. Kohli has built his game on the forward trigger movement, which has served him well on placid wickets at home.

 

On pitches with a bit of spice, as we witnessed in this series in Australia, Kohli looked out of his depth because he does not have the back-foot game to neutralise the extra bounce and the prodigious seam movement.

 

For the past 15 years, the cover drive has been Kohli’s signature shot. It’s a shot he can play in his sleep, something that is ingrained in his muscle memory. Against Australia, Kohli was unable to execute it. When that happened, his scoring opportunities also diminished because, unlike some of his peers, Kohli does not have the cut shot, and his off-side game is surprisingly limited.

 

 In this series, Australia packed the off-side field and kept feeding Kohli on the fifth, sixth, and sometimes even the seventh stump line. This stranglehold curtailed the free-flowing stroke play he was known for, resulting in him nicking the ball either to the slips or the wicket-keeper.

 

You take the cover drive away from Kohli and he looks like a fish out of water. Great players always innovate and find ways to get out of the slump. Over the years, Sachin Tendulkar’s unbeaten 241 in Sydney in 2004 has gained mythical proportions. It was a fascinating innings of restraint, one in which the master set aside his ego and the cover drive to roar back into form.

 

Despite the lack of a cover drive, Tendulkar more than made up for it by unfurling the straight drives, the gorgeous flicks and the emphatic cut shots.  The 241 not out was as aesthetically pleasing as some of his other career-defining innings.

 

Kohli does not have Tendulkar’s discipline, nor his envious repertoire of strokes that can bail him out of his travails. Former Team India coach Ravi Shastri believes that Kohli, at 36, still has another three years of cricket left in him. But numbers don’t lie.

 

In the past five years, spanning 39 Tests, Kohli has registered only three centuries, with an average of 30.72. Sharma and Kohli called time on T20Is last year, but it is unlikely that they will retire from Test cricket on their own.  Chief selector Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir will have honest discussions with the two ageing superstars on the road ahead. If they intend to carry on, they need to step away from the limelight, put in the hard yards in domestic cricket to overcome their glaring inadequacies.

 

Sharma last turned up for a Ranji Trophy game in 2013, Virat did so  in 2012. Do they have the zeal to stage a turnaround so late in their careers?