Injury scare for Rohit Sharma at nets, but he returns to bat

The support staff looked worried and the batting coach Vikram Rathour too came to inspect the injury.

#RohitSharma𓃵 #INDvENG #T20WorldCup
The team physio Kamlesh Jain and team doctor Charles Minz rushed to attend to the Indian captain who was later given ice pack by the physio. Rohit sat on a chair by the sidelines for a while.
📹 @pdevendra pic.twitter.com/0gIYndzsEf

— Express Sports (@IExpressSports) November 8, 2022

After 40 minutes, Sharma decided to bat again. Dayanand Garani, another throwdown specialist, began to throw from his hands. Sharma faced a few balls and asked him to use the stick – the ball-throwing equipment- instead. He didn’t feel pain and India’s scary moment had faded away.

What happened to Raghu?

As Sharma was batting from Garani, he suddenly realised Raghu is missing from the nets. He asked where is Raghu?

The Indian team bowling coach Paras Mhambrey replied that he went back inside after he got “bamboo” (scolding) from Sharma. The Indian captain replied that he had done no such thing and asked Raghu to be called to the nets.

When Dinesh Karthik walked in the adjacent nets, Sharma told him how Raghu had erred in bowling a first-ball yorker and followed it up with a short ball which zipped in. That he had wanted back of length balls.

After a short while, when Raghu walked in, Karthik cheered; so did a few other players.

Rohit asked Raghu to bowl up, “aur upar daal”. In every throwdown Raghu looked apologetic. Sharma batted for another 30 minutes. When he walked back, the security incharge asked him if he was okay and Sharma replied it was a “bit scary”.

The support staff later laughed off the incident. Mhambrey could be heard telling Raghu, “Tu barabar ab aage daal sakta hai. Ab kaise aage daala, ab short nahi dalega na.” (You can now pitch them up just like you did now (in the latest stint to Rohit). Don’t bowl short for now.)

Barring one 50 against Netherlands, Rohit Sharma’s scores this World Cup have been: 4, 15, 2, 15. Sharma hasn’t been in especially good form either: 150 runs in his last 10 T20 innings. And the team is hopeful that their captain would rise to the occasion of the semi-final and come up with a substantial knock.

During the game against Bangladesh, S Raghu had prowled the boundary ropes with the brush to scrape the soles of the shoes of Indian players to enable them to move freely on the wet outfield. He would remove the slush off the boot-feet with the thick brush, and also offer them some water. What Raghu was doing was beyond his work profile. Hailing from Kumta in northern Karnataka, he had left home to pursue his cricket ambitions in Mumbai in the late 1990s. With his cricketing career not going anywhere, he returned to Bangalore and started helping the coaches and players at the National Cricket Academy. Raghu became a favourite with batsmen as he never got tired of throwing balls at them. Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli would ask him to be around when they trained.

India had an optional practice session on Tuesday which was attended by Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya, Sharma, Mohammad Siraj and Shardul Thakur.

Suryakumar Yadav, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, fast bowlers Mohammad Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Rishabh Pant, spinners R Ashwin and Akshar Patel were given a rest. The team had reached Adelaide on Monday night.