'Needs To Just Refresh': Ex South Africa Great's Honest Advice To Rohit Sharma

Speaking about the same, former South Africa great Graeme Smith reckoned that Rohit needs to hit the refresh button to improve his form in the longest format of the game.

The Indian team skipper Rohit Sharma has been going through a lean patch for a while now. He had a below-average IPL 2023 where he scored 322 runs in 16 matches at a strike rate of 132.80 and on top of that he failed to deliver in WTC final 2023 and as a result, his team lost to Australia by 209 runs. A lot of questions have been raised over Rohit’s batting as well as his captaincy skill. Speaking about the same, former South Africa great Graeme Smith reckoned that Rohit needs to hit the refresh button to improve his form in the longest format of the game.

"One of the biggest challenges of a captain is your own personal performance. The pressure of a leader never goes away. Rohit probably needs to just refresh. His own form hasn't probably been at a level consistent. We look at the IPL over a number of years now and obviously the WTC Final is having a bit of a rough patch and often that personal performance can just settle things down a little bit," Smith told The Times of India.

"No one is criticizing his captaincy or leadership style. It's just obviously on the personal performance side, if he can get some really good scores behind him, it takes a lot of that pressure away," he added.

Talking about the WTC final 2023 against Australia, Rohit managed to score only 15 and 43 in both innings at the Oval. For India, comeback man Ajinkya Rahane was the lone warrior with the bat as he made crucial 89 runs in the first innings and followed it up with 46 in the second innings. Since Rohit has not been scoring runs for a while now, reports suggest that Indian team management could give rest to India’s skipper for the West Indies tour.  The Indian team will be locking horns against the West Indies in two Test games, by three ODIs and five T20Is., starting from July 12.

"Rohit looked a bit jaded during the IPL and the World Test Championship final in England. The selectors want him to rest for some part of the West Indies tour. He’s likely to miss the Tests or the eight-match white-ball series (three ODIs and five T20Is) to follow. The selectors will speak to Rohit and then take a decision," a source close to the development was quoted as saying by Times of India.