Indian cricket team captain Rohit Sharma© AFP
Former India spinner Harbhajan Singh has raised the issue of captain Rohit Sharma’s batting form and feels that it might affect his leadership skills in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy after a 10-wicket crushing defeat to Australia in the second Test on Sunday. Rohit, who missed the first Test of the series in Perth due to the birth of his second child, only scored 3 and 6 in the pink-ball Test at Adelaide Oval. The 37-year-old’s form in Test cricket has been a topic of debate since India’s historic 0-3 home loss to New Zealand last month. In that series too, Rohit was not anywhere near to his peak performance in the red-ball format as he only accumulated 91 runs across six innings including 52 in the second innings of Bengaluru Test.
The veteran cricketer highlighted that Rohit’s struggle with the bat can also affect his decision-making skills while leading the team in the remainder of the series.
“When such a big player doesn’t score runs, it will become a slight cause for concern. We know that Rohit has great ability and has scored a lot of runs for India. However, he didn’t score runs in this match and the previous series as well. When the runs are not scored, the pressure comes on the batter,” Harbhajan said on Star Sports.
The former spinner added that Rohit should set aside the past struggles and focus on regaining his form with the World Test Championship (WTC) final on the line.
“We won’t want the Indian captain to have the pressure of scoring his own runs, as it could affect his captaincy as well. We hope that he comes back to form. The conditions at other venues like Brisbane might suit him more. He needs to leave this match behind and think about what better can be done going forward and how the team can play better because the team is more important than his form,” Harbhajan added.
It was Rohit’s fourth successive Test defeat as captain which made him enter the unfortunate list of Indian Test captains with most consecutive losses that includes legends like MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Sachin Tendulkar.
In Rohit’s absence, Jasprti Bumrah led India to an emphatic 295-run win against Australia in the series opener in Perth. The third Test between India and Australia will be played in Brisbane from December 14.
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