Former India head coach Ravi Shastri has recalled the time when he decided to make Rohit Sharma open in Test cricket. Rohit, who bid adieu to the format, a little more than a month before the England Test series, revived his Test career after opening the innings in 2019.
Shastri recalled how he used to see Rohit getting bored of playing at four or five and carried his thought of making him open to the then-India captain Virat Kohli. Shastri was India's head coach from 2017 to 2021, sandwiched between the tenures of the predecessor Anil Kumble and the successor Rahul Dravid.
"Batting at four, five, this guy used to get bored. Then I started dwelling on the fact, why is he so successful in one-day cricket? He likes to be out there early," Shastri said in the ICC Review.
"I said, if he can go out there and do it, he has got enough time on his hands to play the quicks. He's got the shots against the quicks, to take them on. The field is up, so Test cricket might be a honeymoon for him if he starts embracing it," added Shastri.
Shastri came upon the thought to send Rohit to the top of the order after seeing his success in the 2019 ODI World Cup when he slammed five centuries and emerged as the leading run-getter with 648 runs at an average of 81.
The former India coach said he discussed pushing Rohit as an opener with then-captain Virat Kohli. Rohit was an instant success, hitting twin centuries in his first Test at the top of the order against South Africa.
"He'd batted enough at five and six and he wasn't here and he wasn't there," said Shastri about Rohit, who hit nine of his 12 centuries from that point onwards. He would get his 20s or 30s and throw it away. (I thought) let's put him under pressure and send him up (the order). And I remember telling him in the West Indies 'we want you to open'.
"This (decision) was (August) 2019, if I'm not mistaken, after that World Cup. He'd had a great World Cup, so his form was very good. And he might have thought of it for a little while, but he was OK.
"Then he came in for the first Test match and he opened the innings and he got a hundred. If I'm not mistaken, he got a big 100 in that first innings and then he didn't look back because then he seemed to enjoy it," added Shastri.
Shastri mentioned that Rohit invested significant time in refining his technique and developing soft hands, which played a key role in his success as an opener.
"He figured it out and, what I must say, he worked a lot on his technique because I thought his best batting was in England where you really got to play a little differently and especially he had to play with soft hands and could leave (the ball) a lot.
"And he worked on it, which was very good. So, suddenly from nowhere, he was setting up games for you."
