Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has applauded Rohit Sharma for playing a captain’s knock in India’s second innings of the fourth Test against England in Ranchi as well. However, Rohit scored 55 runs off 81 deliveries and also added 84 runs for the first wicket with Yashasvi Jaiswal in India’s chase of a 192-run target. Team India were subsequently reduced to 120/5 before Shubman Gill and Dhruv Jurel’s unbroken 72-run stand guided them to a five-wicket win on Monday, February 26.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Chopra said: “Rohit Sharma has scored more than 4000 Test runs and has played 100 innings. His numbers are good, but despite having scored a lot of Test centuries, this half-century was special because when India needed 192 runs in this match, I was convinced that Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal were extremely important.”
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“If they gave a good start, India could have won the match. However, God forbid, if something had gone wrong – that’s it, then these many runs wouldn’t have been scored,” Aakash Chopra said. “We couldn’t chase in Hyderabad and there Tom Hartley was playing his first match, Jimmy Anderson wasn’t there, India had KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer as well and the pitch was much better than this Ranchi pitch.”
However, Chopra also added that the likes of Rajat Patidar, Sarfaraz Khan, and Dhruv Jurel had never batted in the fourth innings of a Test match before this game as well. He further added that Rohit had to soak up the pressure and lead from the front in such a scenario as well.
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“Rohit played extremely well in my opinion. Firstly, he hit a six off Jimmy Anderson’s bowling. He plays spin well because he is good at defending, stepping out, playing the sweep, and plays with soft hands. There is nothing that he does not do right against spin. Of course, he fell prey to Tom Hartley in the end,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
