Amid the rumors that Rohit Sharma will step down from white-ball captaincy, or that he will retire from T20 format, or that he will only continue leading in Test cricket, there is still a strong case for Rohit to not only continue playing all three formats, but also lead India in all three formats for another couple of years.
Over the heartbreaks in the ICC tournaments in recent years, it was only under Sharma that India actually came very close to winning an ICC trophy this time in the World Cup 2023.
Under Virat Kohli, India lost the 2019 World Cup semi-final and was knocked out in the group-stage of the T20 World Cup 2021.
Then Rohit Sharma took over. He led India India to the semi-final of the T20 World Cup 2022, WTC Final, and World Cup 2023 final. It was mostly down to some bad luck for Team India and some very good luck for Pat Cummins and toss and Travis Head when he played and missed several deliveries from Shami and Bumrah, that India lost the final.
3 reasons why Rohit Sharma should continue leading India in all three formats:
Leads from the front with the bat
There is no debate over his Test future, but more so on his white-ball future. While some argue that Rohit is 36 and India need to groom a younger skipper, Sharma recently showed that he’s still one of the best- arguably the best – white-ball opener in the world during the World Cup.
He walked the talk. Sharma asked his players to play fearlessly and he set the example himself with his ultra-aggressive approach in the powerplay. If he could bat at a strike rate of 130 in the powerplay in ODI format, he could touch the 150-170 strike rate in T20Is. With next year’s T20 World Cup in mind, Rohit Sharma still remains India’s best bet as an opener and a captain.
Rohit Sharma offers huge backing and security to the players
The biggest complaint during Virat Kohli’s tenure was that Kohli didn’t back the players on the fringes and used to drop them after a few failures. But not with Rohit. In whomever Sharma sees a match-winning potential, he backs that player to the hilt.
For example Kuldeep Yadav. Kuldeep got dropped from the side mid-tournament in World Cup 2019 after one bad game against England. That started his downfall of two years. He returned to the side under Sharma’s captaincy in 2022 and once again became one of the best wrist-spinners in the world.
Other options are either inexperienced, lack success, or fitness
The other captaincy options to replace Rohit are KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, and Rishabh Pant. But there are caveats with each of them.
KL Rahul has led in 4 IPL seasons and not reached the final once, while Rohit led Mumbai Indians to two IPL trophies in his first three seasons as captain and delivered three more after that. Rahul also hasn’t seemed bold and confident as a skipper in the IPL.
Bumrah doesn’t play all formats all the time because of his workload management, while Hardik Pandya is always not too far from injury. Rishabh Pant is currently out due to injury and is yet to win an IPL title as a skipper or a player.
