With the scoreline 2-1 and India having a chance to level the series at Sydney in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the skipper of the side, Rohit Sharma, decided to step down and gave the reins to Jasprit Bumrah. Going into the game, Rohit was in poor form and as a captain, too results have not gone his way as he lost two Tests (Adelaide and Melbourne) of the three as captain after the side won the first Test in Perth.
Despite the poor performances, former Indian coach Ravi Shastri backed Rohit. “If I were a coach, you would have never not played that last Test match. You would have played that last Test match because the series wasn’t over,” Shastri said on the ICC review. “And I’m not someone who threw in the towel with the scoreline 2-1. If your mindset is you feel you are… that’s not the stage, you leave a team.”
“The chat that I had with the coach and captain was very simple, I am not making runs. So basically, I am not in form, it is an important match, we need players in form, the boys in our batting are not in form, so you cannot carry too many out-of-form players in the team. So it was difficult for me to make this decision, but if everything is put in front of us, then this decision was sensible. I will not think too much ahead, what the team needed at this time, this was the only thought, and there was no other thought apart from that,” Rohit said at the time, speaking to Star Sports.
“I have come from such a long distance, I have not come here to sit outside or to not play the match. I have to play and make the team win and from the first day when I came to the dressing room in 2007 till now, I have been thinking that I have to make the team win. But sometimes you have to understand what is the need of the team, if you do not put the team first then there is no use. That is why we call it a team, because eleven people are playing, not one person or two people are playing, eleven people are playing, so it is a team, whatever is the cost of the team, try to do that,” Rohit added.
However, as it turned it, the pitch in Sydney was too much in favour of the bowlers with the ball seaming around and uneven bounce because of the grass left. The wicket only got quicker as the game went on. “That was a 30-40 run game. And that’s exactly what I told him. The pitch was so spicy in Sydney. Whatever kind of form he was in, he’s a match-winner,” said Shastri.
“If he had gone, sensed the situation, sensed the condition, and smashed it for even 35-40 at the top, you never know. That series would have been level. But that’s each one to his own,” he added. “Other people have different styles. This would have been my style and I let him know it. It’s sitting in my heart for a long time. I had to get it out. And I told him that.”
