5 min readMohaliJun 11, 2026 07:47 AM IST
First published on: Jun 10, 2026 at 10:36 PM IST
The temperature refused to drop below 40 degrees Celsius as Rohit Sharma checked in for national duty for the first time in five months at the IS Bindra Stadium in Mohali on Wednesday.
The first ball from Nitish Kumar Reddy nipped back with some heat, hitting Rohit flush on the front pad. Conditions will be distinctly cooler when the 39-year-old marks a middle-stump guard again in two days, at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamshala during the first ODI against Afghanistan.
There was no discernible lethargy in footwork, and no sign of the dodgy hamstring that caused concern during the recent IPL season.
A few of his teammates had already braved the Chandigarh heat over the weekend during the one-off Test against Afghanistan at the new PCA Stadium. Returning to action after receiving the fitness clearance from BCCI’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru, Rohit’s first hit stood in sharp contrast. While the other top-order batters unlocked full gung-ho mode in the optional session, Rohit exercised restraint during an hour-long stint.
Thirty minutes after he went through a light sprint shuttle alongside Ishan Kishan, who is returning to the 50-over fold after three years, Rohit watched on as vice-captain Shreyas Iyer padded up first for a centre-wicket hit.
On what was supposed to be the final day of the Test — which Shubman Gill’s men wrapped up in two-and-a-half days in Mullanpur — 15 kilometres away – nine of India’s 14 squad members showed up for a light training session.
All-rounder Hardik Pandya will not link up with the team for the series after suffering a late jolt in his road to recovery at the CoE. Five of India’s Test stars – skipper Gill, KL Rahul, Washington Sundar, Prasidh Krishna and Kuldeep Yadav – gave the session a miss. So did head coach Gautam Gambhir.
It meant that all eyes at the sparsely-attended session were trained on Rohit, his trimmed drives, play-and-misses, late leaves and watchful dabs below the eyeline.
Even as Iyer, Kishan and Yashasvi Jaiswal targeted the bowlers with a series of huge hits, Rohit applied a different colour to his session on the main strip, which he shared with Iyer. India’s young seam attack – featuring Arshdeep Singh, Nitish and fresh call-ups Gurnoor Brar and Prince Yadav – had their moments against the former captain.
Resolute
Arshdeep’s left-arm angle and Prince’s outside off-stump deliveries tested Rohit early in the session. Despite a few edgy drives and miscued flicks, Rohit remained firm in line of the stumps, unruffled by the seamers thereafter.
Gurnoor, the 6-ft-5-in seamer who has bolted into the Test and ODI set-up in recent weeks, hurried him on a couple of occasions. Despite having played only six List A games in the five years since his debut, Brar’s shorter lengths probed both Rohit and Iyer. While Rohit failed to connect his trademark pull twice, Iyer was snuffed out with a sharp bouncer, the ball ballooning straight up towards an imaginary short leg.
Moving to an adjacent net to face a couple of local spin bowlers and left-arm tweaker Harsh Dubey, who is in line for a debut during this series, Rohit closed out his session having regained some smoothness. Two sixes soared towards the sight-screen, with negligible muscle, before the curtain was drawn.
The atmosphere around Rohit was far from serene as Iyer and Kishan, still fresh from their ballistic IPL seasons, smeared the boundaries with a trunk of maximums. While Ishan was particularly aggressive towards the deep mid-wicket fence, Iyer flourished with a series of lofted extra-cover shots off the pacers. Arriving on the heels of his T20 Mumbai League commitments, the latter looked in perfect white-ball sync, even as Brar and Arshdeep tested him with shorter deliveries.
Yet to shed his white pads from the Test match, the left-handed Jaiswal went on the offensive from the outset. After a lacklustre IPL season and a patchy red-ball knock cut short by a loose stroke, he did his best to put all of that behind him, taking down the net bowlers with lofted hits down the ground.
The evening still rested on Rohit’s return, marked by an unhurried 60-minute progression that drew him closer to full-match rigours up in the mountains on Saturday.
Rohit Sharma during a net session on Wednesday ahead of the Afghanistan ODI series. (Express Photo: Jasbir Malhi) 
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