Out of his 254 ODI innings, Indian captain Rohit Sharma has batted 12 times at No. 6. Barring once under former batter Gautam Gambhir, Sharma had played the remaining 11 innings at this position under the legendary MS Dhoni.
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However, Dhoni had expressed an explicable dislike with regard to this player at this batting number after he scored a match-winning century against Bangladesh in the second semi-final of ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. Usually a man of few words, Dhoni had decided to speak at length about Sharma’s ideal batting position and the downside of batting him in the middle-order.
Having himself played the role of a “finisher” for most part of his international career, the two-time World Cup-winning captain defended and empathized with Sharma’s pedestrian returns between Nos. 4-7.
“We felt it was a bit of a waste of his talent if he was batting at six for us because, more often than not, he was not getting enough chances to bat, and our top-order was quite fixed. That’s one of the reasons, why, if you see the first 40 games, you may think he has not done enough,” Dhoni had told reporters in Melbourne.
“That was the time we decided [that] we’ll try to make him an opener, and he accepted that. He did open for us in the T20 World Cup. From that point, we thought it will be good to have him as an opener because he cuts and pulls well, and he’s a natural stroke-player.”
Even though Dhoni pointed out No. 6 in particular, what he meant was Sharma’s long-standing struggle in the middle-order. As was correctly mentioned by Dhoni, Sharma had scored a mere 695 runs at an average of 24.82 after his first 40 ODI innings – out of which he batted 34 times in the middle-order.
Furthermore, Sharma’s promotion as an ODI opener augured well for Indian cricket in the long run. It is to be noted that the team won 65% matches (114 out of 175) with Sharma as an opener – with his personal average skyrocketing to a splendid 66.24. On the contrary, India triumphed just under 58% (44 out of 76) when Sharma batted in the middle-order with his average dropping to 39.57.
Rohit Sharma Came Of Age During ICC Champions Trophy 2013
It is a well-known fact that Sharma’s career changed for the better during ICC Champions Trophy 2013. After Dhoni convinced him to open, Sharma emerged as India’s second-highest run-scorer in the tournament with his opening partner Shikhar Dhawan topping the charts.
Having said that, as mentioned by Dhoni in the above mentioned video, Champions Trophy wasn’t the first global competition in which Rohit Sharma was asked to open in what seemed to be a left-field move at the time.
After Virender Sehwag was ruled out due to shoulder injury and Yusuf Pathan was deemed best-suited in the middle-order, Sharma was proclaimed India’s designated opener alongside Gambhir throughout ICC World Twenty20 2009.
Sharma was, in fact, India’s third-highest run-scorer in the tournament and one of their only three batters who scored a half-century in what was a futile attempt of defending a title. Only 18 months later, the right-handed batter was asked to open the batting thrice in a five-match ODI series in South Africa after Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar was ruled out due to a hamstring injury.
