In the day-night Test match against Australia in Adelaide, Rohit Sharma, who has typically opened the batting for India since 2019, has stated that he will be going down the order. His justification implied that it might be a short-term solution, but it is obvious that KL Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal have performed too effectively together as an opening duo—they added 201 runs in the second innings of the Perth Test to help India win—to be split up right away. This implies that Rohit needs to adapt and play out of position even if he is the team’s captain.
“How I came to that decision of batting down the order is because we want results, we want success,” Rohit said on Thursday. “And those two guys at the top – just looking at this one Test match – they batted brilliantly. I was at home with my newborn in my arms and I was watching how KL batted. It was brilliant to watch, to be honest.
“And I felt that there’s no need to change that now. Maybe in the future things will be different, I don’t know. So based on what has happened and what KL has shown outside of India, he probably deserves that place at this point.
“It is something that has given us success in the first Test. To have that big partnership with Jaiswal on the other side probably won us the Test.”
Rahul was outstanding in both innings in Perth, even if he didn’t score a century. After recovering from a duck in the first innings to score a century, Jaiswal was in such form in the middle that he was pleased to point out that Nathan Lyon, while still a legend, was growing old and that Mitchell Starc was progressing too slowly. India won by 295 runs after scoring 487 for 6.
“When you come to a place like Perth and you get 500-odd runs, it’s a massive tick in the box,” Rohit stated. “What I saw from the outside looked brilliant and there was no need to change anything.”
As he was finishing his response, Rohit gave a glimpse into the team’s desired strategy regardless of the outcome—win, lose, or tie. They don’t appear to submit to authority as much as they once were thought to. For instance, Rahul, who only appeared in one of the three games in their prior Test series, was taking the captain’s place in this instance.
“It was actually pretty simple for me,” Rohit said. “Personally, not easy, but for the team, it made a lot of sense.”
Because it meant leaving out two guys with a combined total of more than 800 Test wickets, India’s team-first mentality drove their selection of the XI they used in Perth.
“It’s always hard to leave out experienced players like Jadeja and Ashwin. But I think the decision was made for whatever was best for the team at that particular time.”