New Delhi: How is Sri Lanka? It is beautiful, scenic, hot, humid and cricket frenzy, right? Well may be not. It actually depends on the person who is answering the question. While personal experiences are ought to vary according to individuals, the extent of variation is generally nominal but not in the case of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan.
The ‘how is Sri Lanka’ question would perhaps get such a contrasting answer from the Indian openers that even the India-Sri Lanka mismatch would fail to compete with it.
On one hand, Shikhar Dhawan cannot put a foot wrong in Sri Lanka; runs are flowing like a running local tap, no one to stop, the velocity changing from time to time, but the flow – endless and smooth. But on the other, Rohit’s foot is getting stuck on the same pitch, betraying him when he needed them the most.
On a day when Dhawan registered his fastest ever ODI hundred off just 71 balls, Rohit became a laughing stalk on social media after getting run out in the most bizarre manner possible. For sure it was, he lost his bat when he was just about to reach the crease and as luck turned out, his feet were inches off the ground when the ball hit the stumps. Not the first time Rohit looked a tad lazy on the cricket field but this was something else, something that would become the ideal source of entertainment for Kohli and his men during one of their pool sessions in Dambulla or Colombo.
To make Rohit’s Sri Lanka diary nothing short of a horror story are his numbers in the last 10 ODIs in the island nation – a highest score of 11, 3 ducks and a hat trick of 4s – 37 in total. The amount of runs his opening partner Dhawan is scoring roughly in 20 balls. Rohit averages 14.25 in the 22 matches he has played in Sri Lanka, 28 lower than his career average of 42.16.
To get matters slightly in Rohit’s favour, he is nowhere near to being out of form; he amassed 304 runs in the Champions Trophy with one match winning century against Bangladesh in the semifinal while the toast of the moment, Dhawan had 338 runs to his credit.
Rohit got a break after Champions Trophy but was one of the firsts to be ticked when the Test squad for the Sri Lanka series was being chosen. In the same time, Dhawan, out of the Test side for the last six months, was planning a vacation with his family.
Of course, both of them and many forgot about the Sri Lanka factor. India’s regular Test opener Murali Vijay was ruled out, Dhawan was called in, scored more than 100 runs in the second session of Day 1 of the first Test which pushed Mukund out of the side when Rahul returned, scored 358 runs in the three-match series with an average of 89, pretty good for someone who was not even thought of as India’s third opener.
In case of Rohit though, the clock continued to go backwards. With the emergence of Hardik Pandya and Ashwin-Saha doing a fine enough job at No. 6 and 7, his chances of making a comeback in whites faded away. He was sent back to Mumbai for a medical check-up.
He returned to his preferred format with an added responsibility of vice-captaincy, but the Sri Lankan soil, as it turned out, was in no mood to welcome the stylish right-hander. It continued to shower its blessings on the southpaw so much so that for Dhawan Sri Lanka went from an oasis to a paradise but for Rohit it remained just a hot and sultry subcontinent nation.
With captain Virat Kohli hinting at experiments in the series to prepare for the 2019 World Cup, Rohit Sharma would sincerely hope he has a better answer than hot and sultry when someone asks him ‘how is Sri Lanka’ at the end of the series.