In his last 26 T20 innings, Rohit has lost his wickets to left-arm fast bowlers 12 times - nearly 50 percent of the time ©BCCI/IPL
An absolute corker and Rohit's off-stump goes for a walk. The Wankhede crowd have been stunned into silence, one of their home boys today has been sent packing second ball - beautifully bowled, on a good length and it nipped away with the angle, Rohit was playing for the inswinger and ended up playing down the wrong line, the ball curved past the outside edge and crashed into the off-stump...
That was an excerpt from Cricbuzz's ball-by-ball commentary during a World Cup league match between India and Sri Lanka. On a November afternoon in 2023, Dilshan Madushanka stunned a packed Wankhede crowd. Since that day, left-arm pacers have emerged as the India skipper's bete noire - his arch-nemesis, his kryptonite.
Another day, another match, another opposition, another bowler... but the result was the same. "...It swings past the inside edge and hits the middle of leg peg," the Cricbuzz live commentary read on Rohit's dismissal by Yash Dayal on Monday (April 7) night. A packed Wankhede was stunned into silence once again as Dayal breached through Rohit's defence.
That ODI World Cup dismissal may well have been a sort of inflection point in Rohit's career. Since then, left-arm pacers have troubled and frustrated him besides accounting for his wicket, across formats, more often than not. His vulnerability is especially striking in the T20 format. In 26 innings since that November 2023 afternoon, Rohit has given away his wickets to left-arm fast bowlers 12 times - nearly 50 percent of the time.
Fazalhaq Farooqi, Trent Boult, and Khaleel Ahmed (all twice), along with Shaheen Afridi, Mitchell Starc, Sam Curran, Mohsin Khan, and Saurabh Netravalkar (once each), had already gotten the better of him - before Dayal inflicted further damage in Mumbai Indians' clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Monday night.
Since the start of 2024, Rohit has faced 157 balls in T20s from left-arm pacers, scoring 249 runs at a strike rate of over 158 but at a lowly average of 20.75. His dot ball percentage stands at 44.5, while his boundary percentage is 27.38. In the four innings he's played this IPL, he's fallen to left-arm pacers twice - exactly 50 percent of the time. Rohit Sharma and left-arm quicks... it's anything but a love story.
On Monday night, Rohit Sharma smashed two back-to-back boundaries off Dayal on either side of the wicket before being undone by a fullish, in-swinging delivery. It was a well-calibrated, well-researched match-up-based move by the RCB think-tank. Instead of going with their regular option, Josh Hazlewood, they handed the second over of the MI innings to Dayal. He struck with the fourth ball.
"I am aware that a lot of left-hand pacers have bowled to Rohit in the past and had success against him. So I'm sure that was the thinking behind that move. But of course, at the end of the day, you have to go out there and execute that plan. And I feel Rajat (Patidar) did that well," RCB batter Devdutt Padikkal said about the thinking behind unleashing the left-arm pacer for Rohit.
Rohit Sharma's vulnerability to left-arm pace could be akin to Virat Kohli's perceived struggle against leg-spin. Coaches speak of the technique that is rooted in geometry and angles. The stance a batter takes and the angle at which the bat comes down are, it is said, crucial in negotiating deliveries from left-arm quicks. If a batter commits early by planting his front foot too soon, it becomes difficult to adjust to the ball darting back in.
"He doesn't release his back foot, allowing the ball to sneak through the gap. Especially after planting the front foot, it becomes a double whammy," explains a noted IPL coach, analyzing Rohit's struggles against the left-arm pacers. "At the point of release, a batter's weight should ideally be on the back foot, with the front foot light and ready to move toward the ball. But in Rohit's case, the weight gets stuck on both feet. That subtle shift in balance - crucial for adjusting - isn't happening."
"I wouldn't read into that too much. It's something that I'm sure that Ro will work hard on, definitely," Mahela Jayawardene said after MI's narrow 12-run defeat, fourth reversal in five games. "Yash bowled a good ball. It was late swing and fuller, got through Ro's defence. So I think when you have played the game for that long, I think you need to sometimes get ready for the bowlers as well. It's just a natural angle and then creating that space. I'm sure Ro's been working on it. He's been practising hard. And he's a very experienced player. He was trying to give us a good start. And he played some really good shots."
The MI coach, himself an accomplished batsman in his heydays, saw parallels the way bowlers of the past did to right-handed batsmen. "For the right-handed batsmen and left-armers, it is a natural thing, particularly for the opening batsmen. It's been there for many years. I can remember Chaminda Vaas doing the same thing for many teams. Wasim Akram doing the same thing," Jayawardene said.
It's time Rohit and Jayawardene addressed this pattern of dismissals. Because up next for Mumbai Indians is a clash against Delhi Capitals (in the capital on April 13) and a certain Mitchell Starc will be raring to have a go at him.
© Cricbuzz
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