Ever since the 2023 edition of the Indian Premier League started, Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma has been struggling to score runs. As of now, the MI skipper has scored only one half-century in 10 IPL matches. Rohit Sharma registered his second successive duck this season while playing against Chennai Super Kings on Saturday.
Reacting to his prolonged lean patch with the bat, former India cricketer Kris Srikkanth, who was doing commentary for MI vs CSK IPL 2023 match, allegedly took a jibe at Rohit and his cheeky comment for the Indian captain went viral on social media in no time.
Srikkanth had allegedly said: "Not Hit Sharma". Rohit Sharma should change his name to 'NO HIT SHARMA', I will not even play him in XI if I was Captain of MI," as quoted by News 18.
It seems the comment made by Srikkanth did not go down well with many, including ex-India cricketer Aakash Chopra, who took to Twitter to condemn his act, without directly naming the 1983 World Cup winner. "When former cricketers assume the role of 'trollers', you know that it's hit the lowest ebb. Nadir," Chopra wrote on Twitter.
Skipper Rohit took part in the 10 games this season so far and has only managed to score 184 runs at an average of 18.40. He even experimented with his batting position by coming in at No. 3 spot against CSK but that also failed.
Rohit spoke about his performance and said, "Everywhere I guess (on what went wrong), we didn't bat well enough, didn't put enough runs for the bowlers to defend. We had an off-day as a batting unit. We just did what we felt was comfortable (on him going down to 3), needed an Indian batter to bat in the middle overs against spin after unfortunately losing Tilak Varma, but we lost three wickets for just 16 runs.”
"He's bowling really well, the other bowlers need to rally around him, that's what the team needs, everyone has to come forward and chip in contributions. There's no such home advantage this season, everyone has won and lost at home, we need to do all the three departments of the game, we'll play at home in the next two games, we'll see how it goes”, he added.