2 Biggest Mistakes Made By Rohit Sharma In His Captaincy Career: Rohit Sharma’s captaincy tenure has so far failed to live up to the hype and expectations that the fans and the selectors had before handing him over the all-format leadership.
India had been winning bilateral series under Virat Kohli, but it was the lack of an ICC or major trophy that India so desperately needed. Having won Mumbai Indians 5 IPL titles, there were great expectations from Rohit Sharma, but so far, he’s failed to deliver it.
India failed to reach the finals of the Asia Cup 2022 and T20 World Cup 2022 and recently lost the WTC Final 2023.
Some of the selection decisions made by Rohit Sharma have come under heavy scrutiny and criticism in these losses. Rohit Sharma has benched a couple of big stars in crucial games and that seems to have backfired.
2 senior players whom captain Rohit Sharma dropped in big matches and India lost the match:
Yuzvendra Chahal in T20 World Cup 2022
Yuzvendra Chahal has plenty of reasons to be upset and disappointed with the way he’s been treated in the past couple of years. He wasn’t even selected in the T20 World Cup 2021 squad.
Then, he got selected in the squad for the T20 WC 2022 in Australia, but didn’t play a single game as India picked Axar Patel and R Ashwin in their side.
This was despite Yuzvendra Chahal having a terrific time in T20 cricket: he was the Purple Cap winner in IPL 2022, and is now the leading wicket-taker for India in T20Is. Chahal was treated harshly by the management of Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid in the T20 WC 2022 and he should have played in the tournament, irrespective of the conditions or opposition, for he’s a world-class leg-spinner.
As Adil Rashid showed to India in the T20 WC semi-final, quality leg-spinners can find a way to make impact even on good batting surfaces in Australia.
R Ashwin in WTC Final
There were plenty of reasons India could have played R Ashwin in the WTC Final 2023: Ravichandran Ashwin is the number 1 ranked ICC Test bowler, 2nd ranked Test all-rounder, has 474 Test wickets, has a good bowling average of 28 in England, Australia have 4 left-handers in their top 7, he was India’s top wicket-taker in the WTC 2023 cycle and third-highest overall with his average better than those two above him, can hold his end with the bat, has vast experience, had the wood over Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschange, etc, etc.
But Rohit Sharma chose not to play their legendary off-spinner and instead go in with Shardul Thakur, who hadn’t played a Test match for 16 months, and Umesh Yadav, who averaged 31 in England and had a tendency to leak runs. That is what happened as India lost by 209 runs with both Umesh and Thakur being largely poor with the ball.
Even the best reader of a game and conditions Sachin Tendulkar was taken by surprise with R Ashwin’s non-selection in the WTC Final.
