Indian captain Rohit Sharma’s bad form continued on Friday in the IND vs ENG 2nd Test. The batter, opening the innings for India, was dismissed for 14 runs even as his fellow opener Yashasvi Jaiswal scored an unbeaten 179. Former Indian cricketer Dinesh Karthik said the innings was unlike Rohit Sharma’s natural game, and that he struggled with fluency.
Rohit Sharma looked unsettled right from the start of his innings. The Indian captain, who plays in a naturally aggressive style, missed a couple of bad balls by Joe Root as he focused too much on getting himself in rather than pursuing with his natural game. Rohit ultimately was dismissed by debutant Shoaib Bashir on 14 runs of 41 balls.
Dinesh Karthik, speaking on a post-day show on Cricbuzz, said he wanted more from Rohit and expected the Indian batter to play his natural cricket.
“It was not a quintessential Rohit Sharma innings. The couple of full-tosses that he missed was glaring enough. He wasn’t in the third and fourth gear which he needed to be in this Vizag pitch. This wasn’t one pitch where you needed to do more than the basics. England bowled well to him, didn’t give him a boundary. It was an innings which wasn’t fluent, where he didn’t get going,” Karthik said on Rohit.