Gavaskar questions Rohit Sharma’s intent after Ranji Trophy loss

Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar has raised questions over the true intentions of Mumbai batters including Rohit Sharma after their defeat in the Ranji Trophy game.

The team’s game in the second half of the domestic tournament saw several top Indian players return to grassroots in a bid to regain form and abide by the new BCCI rules which made playing domestic cricket mandatory for all players.

However, Indian captain Rohit Sharma continued his dry run with the bat as he only managed to score three and 11 in the side’s two innings during their Ranji Trophy game.

Following the Mumbai batters’ poor outing in the game, former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar has raised questions about their intentions to play the game.

In a column in an Indian publication, Gavaskar slammed the Mumbai batters’ approach to attempt big shots in a pitch that had movement.

“The dismissal of Mumbai’s Test batters once again brought to the fore the perils of the all-out aggressive mode of batting that is nowadays thought of as being central to run-making. It can work on flat pitches, but on pitches where the ball is doing something, there has to be a technique good enough to keep out the good delivery,” the former Indian captain wrote.

According to Sunil Gavaskar, the aggressive batting approach backfired in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series where Rohit Sharma was dismissed several times while going on the offensive.

“There are more chances of a dismissal while looking to play in a manner that one is not used to, as was seen in the recent Sydney Test [between India and Australia] when rushes of blood caused some silly-looking dismissals,” he wrote.

Gavaskar went on to question if Rohit Sharma and Shreyas Iyer only played the Ranji Trophy game to keep their national contracts.

“Whether their hearts were in it or they did that only to ensure they were not stripped of their BCCI contracts, like Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer were, after missing out on the Ranji Trophy games last year, is known only to them. Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal’s participation meant that Ayush Mhatre, who had got a couple of hundreds and some fifties, had to be left out of the Mumbai side,” Sunil Gavaskar wrote.