The Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar is very impressed with the way the new Indian test captain Rohit Sharma led the team in his first test match as captain against Sri Lanka at Mohali. India beat Sri Lanka comfortably inside three days by the margin of an innings.
On a surface where India scored more than 570 runs batting first, the visitors couldnt even cross the 200-run mark in either of the two innings, although the nature of the surface didn’t significantly change over the period of three days.
Rohit Sharma, who was in charge of the Indian team in the whites for the first time, made good bowling changes, but he also caught the eyes of the pundits with his field placement. Rohit realized very early during the Sri Lankan innings that there was not much seam movement on offer.
So, he shifted away from the conventional slips and gully plan and opted for the “ring field” where he had a short midwicket, short square leg and a fielder in the close-in position right between the short midwicket and short square leg. The bowlers attacked the stumps and created pressure with that ring field.
Sunil Gavaskar thinks Rohit Sharma was spot on with his tactical moves
Against the spinners as well, Rohit had his deep fielders a few yards outside the inner circle, but not very close to the boundary. They were in no-man’s land and always invited the big shots from the batsman as there was a boundary on offer with that fielder being cleared. Niroshan Dickwella fell into that trap of Rohit, as he tried to take Ravindra Jadeja on and was holed out at square leg.
Rohit’s moves impressed Sunil Gavaskar a lot. Speaking on the Star Sports post match show, Gavaskar said although he wouldn’t give Rohit 10 out of 10 because nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement, but he would certainly give him 9.5 out of 10 for his captaincy.
