India captain and opener Rohit Sharma was dismissed for only 5 runs in the first innings of the first Test against South Africa.
The 2-Test series kick-started on Tuesday in Centurion with the South African skipper, Temba Bavuma, winning the toss and electing to bowl first.
Bavuma cited the overcast conditions in Centurion, the moisture in the pitch, and the grass on the surface as the reasons for his decision to bowl. His fast bowlers vindicated their captain’s decision by picking out India’s top three for only 24 runs in 12 overs.
The South African pace trio was all over the Indian batters. The Indian batters played and missed and mistimed plenty of shots as the ball seamed laterally and also carried the extra bounce from the pitch.
One rare shot that Rohit Sharma connected well turned out to be a poor choice as he pulled a back-of-length delivery from Kagiso Rabada straight to the fine leg fielder.
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While Rohit plays the pull shot very well in white-ball cricket, and more often finds the boundary with it, the pull shot has not been an effective stroke for Rohit in Test cricket. Teams set up proper plans and have men in the deep to take catches if Rohit doesn’t connect his pull well.
According to Twitter user @imRohit_SN, Rohit Sharma has got out 7 times in his last 20 away-from-home innings while playing the pull/hook shot. That is a seriously big chunk of his dismissals in the past three years on tours on this type of shot. Yet, Sharma didn’t hesitate to go after Rabada and paid the price.
This inevitably led to a spate of trolling of Rohit Sharma, majority from the fans of Virat Kohli:
Teams:
South Africa (Playing XI): Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Tony de Zorzi, Temba Bavuma(c), Keegan Petersen, David Bedingham, Kyle Verreynne(w), Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee, Kagiso Rabada, Nandre Burger
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(w), Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna
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