With his IPL success, Rohit Sharma has jumped the queue to take the tag of Indian cricket’s ‘next big thing’. Our correspondent on the youngster who has retained his grace in this slam-bang format

ROHIT Sharma has had the kind of fortnight that only the most optimistic 21-year-old budding cricketer would have day dreamed of on a lazy and idle off-season summer afternoon. At the Indian Premier League’s halfway mark, Sharma could be pardoned for thinking he is in a make-believe world of fantasy cricket where cricketing icons are reduced to desktop icons.

In the last 15 days, he has moved away from the crease to sweep Muttiah Muralitharan for a four to fine leg, dispatched Shane Warne over extra cover, used his feet to cart Anil Kumbe to Row J of the mid-wicket stands, effortlessly scooped over Zaheer Khan’s head and tip-toed down the track to hit Mohammad Asif over long-on.
But despite the mind-numbing hotel-to-airport-to-stadium schedule of the IPL, where record-breaking spinners and pacers of repute spring out periodically like intimidating demons on a gaming console, Sharma hasn’t mindlessly banged the ‘enter’ key. There have been improvisations, but still his shot selection remains judicious. Almost refreshing, that the GenNext batsman has dispatched the cross-batted ugly audacity of the Twenty20 format with a perfect straight-elbow posture. More heartening is the fact that in this depressing scenario of technically perfect seniors resembling lemons sold to franchise owners, the new kid in town with the MCC coaching manual under his arm has been seen wearing IPL’s version of the yellow jersey — the orange cap.
After the inauspicious IPL debut of a three-ball duck on the dicey Eden Gardens pitch, Sharma’s run sequence has been 66, 36, DNB, 76, 57, 23 and 5. A strike rate of almost 150 and an average in the mid-40s means Sharma the batsman, like the other long-haired Sharma, the bowler, has proved that there were no false dawns Down Under earlier this year.
Less than a year back, Sharma had made his ODI debut in Ireland but this was followed by a frustrating wait on the bench as India’s middle order continued to be the domain of 30-plus legends or 25-plus youngsters finally cementing their place. Then, Sharma’s Twenty20 heroics saw him play all the games during the tri-series in Australia, where he hit two significant half-centuries. But there were no Man-of-the-Match awards and his high of scoring 66 in the final was overshadowed by Sachin Tendulkar’s epic 117 not out. And that meant Australia only saw the spade work for Sharma’s big launch in cricket’s big blockbuster — IPL.
Sharma’s inbuilt natural ‘switch off and switch on system’ and his almost fundamentalist mind-set of keeping his game absolutely simple has meant the youngster hasn’t been dazzled by the bright lights or the hype surrounding this high-intensity league.

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