Ex-India star finds big loophole in Rohit Sharma’s batting approach vs NZ: ‘Mis-hitting attacking shots, not trusting…’

After the match, India captain Rohit Sharma revealed his disappointment and said that it wasn’t ‘easily digestible’. The veteran also accepted that he wasn’t in good form, stating, “From a personal point of view, I wasn’t at my best with both bat and as a captain, that’s something that’ll rankle me.”

In the first innings of the match, Rohit was dismissed for 18 off 18 balls, losing his wicket to Matt Henry. In the second innings, Henry struck again to remove Rohit for 11 off 11 deliveries.

Rohit Sharma’s batting performance dissected

Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar analysed Rohit’s woes, and found a glaring weakness in his approach.

“I will never say that he is reckless because he is finding his own way to ensure that he gets runs, to get the team to win. He clearly doesn’t trust his defence anymore, you could see that, there was a lbw appeal and that must have just made him feel unsettled ever more. So the next thing that he looks to do is counter-attack and he did that because the target wasn’t a huge one, and who knows a couple of shots here and there and he would have maybe replicated that Bangladesh run chase,” he said.

“But the shot that he played to get out was where he was trying to hit the ball into the stands rather than just make the connection. He is missing a few of his big hits. There was one in the first Test match as well, where he stepped out and tried to hit the ball out of the ground, so he is mis-hitting a lot of his attacking shots and he is not trusting his defence enough. So that is a real problem for Rohit Sharma currently,” he further added.

In Tests at home this season, Rohit has only scored 133 runs in 10 innings at a lowly average of 13.30. He has only managed one half-century with a high-score of 52.