Six weeks ago, India’s five Test home season was billed as the perfect opportunity for Rohit Sharma & Co. to seal the World Test Championship final spot with a clean sweep and brace themselves for staging a hat-trick Down Under, in the much-anticipated Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
With a solitary week remaining in the home sea- son in the whites, the India men’s cricket flock finds itself in a difficult position.
Thanks to consecutive weeks of carnage by New Zealand, the WTC final position is in jeopardy. Unless India signs off the home leg with a glorious turnaround at the Wankhede Stadium during the festive week, the Australian sojourn may well turn out to be a long affair.
Rohit’s first Test tour Down Under, when he was in the reserves in 2011-12 and when India was on a losing spree, was a forgettable one.
Thirteen years later, he will lead a relatively inexperienced group with more than half a dozen first-timers for a Test tour to Australia.
Rohit, the captain, will have to step up in the build-up to the series.
“It is important that when we were in their place of having played only five or six Tests, all we wanted was support from the team and the captain, the coach and the management.
“That is what I am going to try and do with a lot of guys who haven’t been to Australia or will be playing their first or second Test. Whether it is in India or Australia, for that matter,” Rohit said after India lost the second Test against New Zealand.
“Clear messages, keep- ing them nice and calm, making them feel that they belong here, those are the things that they need to understand and that is our responsibility. That is something that we have to make sure and keep imposing on the team.”
Rohit stressed that the management group does not need to get carried away with the unbeaten 12- year series streak at home being broken.
“I am certainly not going to overreact to what has happened here. You need to have a quiet chat with certain individuals and let them know where they are and what, as a team, we require from them,” Rohit said.
“Other than that, I don’t think you need to make them sit in a team room on a one-on-one basis and go through their innings and tell them this is what you should be doing and this is what you shouldn’t be doing. I don’t think this is the right forum to do that.”