{"id":9640,"date":"2025-02-10T12:25:57","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T07:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=9640"},"modified":"2025-02-10T12:29:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T07:29:58","slug":"india-relieved-as-rohit-regains-form-ahead-of-champions-trophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/sports\/india-relieved-as-rohit-regains-form-ahead-of-champions-trophy\/","title":{"rendered":"India relieved as Rohit regains form ahead of Champions Trophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month after his poor form forced Rohit Sharma to drop himself from a test match in Sydney, the India captain can finally breathe easy after producing a faith-restoring hundred in Sunday\u2019s second one-day international<\/a> (ODI) against England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohit quit T20 Internationals<\/a> minutes after leading India to their second 20-overs World Cup title<\/a> last year and has struggled in tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mumbai player turns 38 in April and media reports claim the selectors have asked him about his future plans beyond the Champions Trophy<\/a> beginning later this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohit scored two in the opening ODI against England, but Sunday\u2019s 119 off 90 balls was a timely reminder that the elegant opener is not a spent force yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the cleanest strikers of the ball, Rohit clobbered seven effortless sixes and the familiar sweet sound of the bat whacking the ball announced the 50-overs stalwart was back in his element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really broke it down into pieces about how I wanted to bat,\u201d player-of-the-match Rohit said of his approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a 50-over format \u2026 but you still need to break it down and assess what you need to do at regular intervals and that is what I kept doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was important for a batter who gets set to bat as deep as possible and that was my focus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been Rohit\u2019s template in ODIs \u2014 assessing before exploding, an approach that has fetched him three 200-plus scores, the most by a batsman, including a 264 that remains the highest individual score in this format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cuttack on Sunday, it was a typical Rohit knock where he shunned the cross-batted shots early in his knock before hitting the English bowlers all over the park at Barabati Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you play on black soil, (the ball) tends to skid on a bit, so it\u2019s important that you show the full face of the bat when you\u2019re batting initially,\u201d the right-hander said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce I got into my innings, I understood what they were trying to do – bowling into our body and trying to not give any room, keeping it on the stumps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where I prepared my plan as well, what I wanted to do with those kind of deliveries, trying to access the gaps which were there. It\u2019s about understanding what you want to do as a batter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India begin their Champions Trophy campaign<\/a> against Bangladesh in Dubai on February 20.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A month after his poor form forced Rohit Sharma to drop himself from a test match in Sydney, the India captain can finally breathe easy after producing a faith-restoring hundred in Sunday\u2019s second one-day international (ODI) against England. Rohit quit T20 Internationals minutes after leading India to their second 20-overs World Cup title last year and has struggled in tests. The […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":9641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,84,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-india","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}