T20 WC: Rohit Sharma fuses grace with brute power to lead India’s win against Aussies

2023 loss to Australia

It took Rohit a long time to get over the loss – has he really? – to Australia in the final of the 50-over World Cup in Ahmedabad on November 19, 2023. Until that fateful night, India had played some of the most exhilarating cricket by a team in a single competition. They were bold, they were proactive, they were switched on, and they were unrelenting. One team after another, starting with Australia in their opening league game in Chennai, were not so much defeated as vanquished.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow appeared theirs for the taking until, for the second time in five months, their aspirations were dealt a cruel blow by Australia. Mighty Australia. Uncompromising Australia. In June in the final of the World Test Championship at The Oval, Pat Cummins’ had masterminded a fabulous victory; in November, India played themselves into a corner on a track that didn’t suit that brand of play, against an opposition that knew how to step in for the kill at the first hint of an opening.

T20 series makes no ripples

Rohit had provided India a customary blazing beginning with a 31-ball 47, robust and full of strokes, until he was smartly caught by Travis Head, running back from cover, in the final over of the Powerplay. The captain had established another platform, 76 for two, but his colleagues let him down badly and India were bowled out for 240. Australia appeared in a hole at 47 for three when Head reprised his WTC final heroics with a counter-attacking century. The left-handed opener’s bruising 137 made it singularly one-way traffic, the Aussies waltzing to a six-wicket romp with seven overs to spare to send a nation into a night – several nights – of mourning.

Such is the crammed calendar that within four days, India and Australia were locking horns again, in a five-match T20 series which nothing more than commercial interest on the line. India had a new captain with Rohit rested and Hardik Pandya injured; Suryakumar Yadav led a team of non- and semi-regulars to a 4-1 series victory, but it hardly created a ripple.

Monday morning showdown

So, this became the big one. India vs Australia, in the Super Eight stage of the T20 World Cup, at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium, named after West Indies’ two-time T20 World Cup-winning captain, in the country of his birth, St Lucia.

It was a Monday morning showdown amid gusting winds, the stakes higher for Australia. With two wins on the bounce and a massive net run rate, India had a foot and a half in the knockout semis; the 2021 champions, by contrast, had been lured to their doom 36 hours earlier by Afghanistan, and if they lost this battle, their future would no longer be in their own hands. What an alluring prospect for India’s revenge-minded fans, if not for their captain and the team itself.

Perhaps unfairly, Rohit held himself a little responsible for what happened in Ahmedabad. He was determined to espouse the style of play his team had embraced throughout the 50-over World Cup, but it wouldn’t have been lost on him that fingers were pointed for him continuing on the attacking path despite having hit Maxwell for a six and a four in the same over where he was dismissed. Maybe he felt he owed his team, if not himself, a big one; it didn’t turn out to be a bad bargain at all.

Rohit’s early punches

Having won two matches defending a target, India would have liked to chase one, but that decision was taken away from them after Rohit called wrong. Mitchell Marsh asked them to make first use of an excellent batting deck, the best India have encountered all tournament, and Rohit needed no second invitation. Mitchell Starc, the wonderful left-arm swing exponent, has been a troublesome entity in the past, but Rohit tore into him with such breathtaking ferocity that Australia were shell-shocked, the telling early punches rocking them into elementary errors.

When Rohit is purring, there is no more pleasing sight on the cricket field. On Monday, he rattled to his half-century off just 19 deliveries, the fastest fifty in this World Cup and the fastest fifty in all T20Is against Australia. He fused characteristic grace with brute power. He chose Starc first to take out his angst, smashing him for four sixes and a four in the game’s third over which yielded a whopping 29. It didn’t matter to him then that Virat Kohli, his beleaguered opening partner, had courted a second duck in four innings in the previous over from Josh Hazlewood. It didn’t faze him that Rishabh Pant, the No. 3, was taking time finding his feet. Rohit was on a mission, to seek and destroy – reputations, bowling figures, Australian hopes.

On a mission

Strokes of genius were interspersed with agricultural mows, something the 20-over game perforce demands of even the most technically perfect. Slog-sweeps against pace and spin alike were shaded, however, by an extraordinary stroke against Marcus Stoinis, the medium-pacer. As he pitched the ball slightly, only slightly, full, Rohit’s left foot jutted out, the bat came down as if an extension of his arms, and he made gentle, apologetic contact with the ball. It went sailing way over extra cover, as if its only aim in life was to obey Rohit’s diktat. John Keats might well have been referencing this slice of magic when he said in Endymion, A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

Rohit hurried to 92 off 41 deliveries, with plenty of time to reach a historic sixth T20I hundred. He chose team over self, trying to score off a Starc full ball when he could so easily have just blocked it. Or maybe we are just romanticising that dismissal because of what preceded it. India’s 24-run win wasn’t inconsequential, but this morning was about Rohit, no matter if that won’t please him.

Now perhaps to remind him, if he needs reminding, that Thursday’s opponents in the semis, England, are the same outfit that eliminated India at the same stage in the last T20 World Cup, in Australia.