This is an archive article published on December 15, 2017

Opinion When he bats

If cricket is not just about numbers, Rohit Sharma is the player to watch

Oli has himself stressed that his government wants to intensify relations with both countries.

By: Editorial

December 15, 2017 12:41 AM IST First published on: Dec 15, 2017 at 12:41 AM IST

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Rohit bats as if there was an invisible wrap of velvet around his bat, with the artistry of a fresco artist.

Beneath the sheer volume of runs he stacked up en route to his third double hundred in ODI, or the vast canvas of the strokes he displayed, is the aesthetic pleasure of watching Rohit Sharma. There’s Virat Kohli, the limited-over colossus, who redefined the metrics of run chases, AB de Villiers, who like a geometrician threads the most inconceivable of angles, Chris Gayle, who bats like a man cleaving an ancient pine tree with a single blow from a mallet. But Rohit bats as if there was an invisible wrap of velvet around his bat, with the artistry of a fresco artist.

He struck a mind-boggling 13 fours and a dozen sixes, but not one of them could be called violent or brutal, or banal. There were strokes the connoisseurs would frown upon. Like the slog-sweep, the embodiment of all strokes agricultural in cricket, and a stroke most cricket stylists recoil from. But Rohit has beautified even the slog sweeps, in that he never seems to use any brutish power, the muscle on his forearms hardly twitch. The man himself rubbishes the suggestions of effortlessness in his batting. There’s, of course, power and precision behind his strokes, but it’s Rohit’s gift of timing and grace that transcends those virtues into something ethereal. It’s the beauty of his strokes, the balletic balance and the nimble footwork that has enamoured selectors, teammates and viewers alike.

While cricket is fundamentally governed and judged by numbers, aesthetics have a profound place. David Gower, Mark Waugh, Damien Martyn or VVS Laxman weren’t the best batsmen of their era, but they are still remembered for the beauty of their strokes. So could be Rohit. He’s not the finest of them, that’s the preserve of the Kohlis and Smiths. But there can be no more deft batsman of quality in the cricket world at present. And for those who appreciate batting as art, it was three and a half hours well spent at Mohali.