IND v ENG: Hyderabad loss highlights flaws in Rohit Sharma’s Test captaincy as Ben Stokes outsmarts India skipper

“India will win the series, the matter is whether they will win it 4-0 or 5-0. Every Test will be decisive. England could have won this Test match had they batted well.

One cannot win against India by making 230 or 240 runs on Indian soil. Had they made 350 or 400, they could have beaten India, but they weren’t able to do that. It’s a tough series for England. Any team other than the Australia of that era could not create any impact here,” former India captain Sourav Ganguly told India Today, predicting an India series win.

The India tour was touted as the final frontier for England’s Bazball with cricket pundits holding the Rohit Sharma-led Indian team as the firm favourites ahead of the five-Test series. And for the first two days of the Test, India looked in complete control with Rohit Sharma’s side bowling out England for 246 and then piling up a 190-run lead with three batters getting dismissed in the 80s.

But as the Indian great Sachin Tendulkar once said, “Test cricket is about staging comebacks. There is always a second innings if you’ve missed the first one.” England did make a solid comeback with Ollie Pope leading their fightback with the bat on a Hyderabad pitch that was not a rank turner, but it assisted spinners like any other subcontinent wicket.

Pope played one of the greatest Test knocks by a visiting batter in Indian conditions and then the inexperienced England spinners outperformed the experienced India trio of Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, and Axar Patel in Hyderabad. Ashwin and Jadeja were forced to make errors, a rarity in Indian conditions, as England took the attack to the spin twins and overturned the first-innings deficit to post 420 on the board and set India a steep target of 241.

While Rohit Sharma failed to inspire his team with his captaincy and batting, Ben Stokes did it – completed his first challenge in India, flaunting England’s much-talked-about Bazball style. Stokes has led England to home series victories against New Zealand and South Africa, a one-off Test win against India, an Ashes comeback against Australia last summer, an away series win in Pakistan, and now a Test win in India since taking over as captain in 2022, with Brendon McCullum as head coach.

On the other hand, Rohit has now lost a WTC Final to Australia, one Test in South Africa, and two Test losses in home conditions (Indore vs Australia and Hyderabad vs England). While Rohit’s captaincy in red-ball cricket has been under scrutiny since the WTC Final loss, the home losses raised many eyebrows. Both Tests saw Rohit coming up against two attacking opposition captains– Steve Smith and Ben Stokes. Stokes and Smith’s ability to be proactive and respond to the flow of the game in both Tests seems to have caught Rohit and his team napping.

ROHIT vs SMITH Staggering!

Steve Smith stood in for Pat Cummins, who had rushed back to Australia due to a family emergency, in the third Test against India in Indore. Australia, without their captain and premier fast bowler, went on to register a 9-wicket win over India at Holkar Cricket Stadium in less than seven sessions, reversing embarrassing defeats in Nagpur and Delhi.

Smith became the first touring captain to win two Tests in India since former England captain Alastair Cook did it in 2012. He was also the first Australian captain to win a Test in India on successive tours. Smith took captaincy in the subcontinent’s conditions like duck to water and was inventive with his field placements, making life easier for his spinner. Except for a few poor DRS calls on the first day, Smith rarely made a mistake at Holkar Cricket Stadium.

On the other hand, most of the decisions that Rohit made in the Indore Test against Australia failed to produce the desired result. After winning the toss for the first time in the series, Rohit decided to bat on what appeared to be a raging turner at Indore’s Holkar Stadium. All three reviews were burned in Ravindra Jadeja’s overs, as the left-arm spinner persuaded skipper Rohit Sharma. Two of those reviews were used to make arguably simple not-out decisions. In fact, India did not seek a review when R Ashwin trapped Marnus Labuschagne in front, and replays suggested that the World No. 1 batter would have been out had Rohit made the correct call. Rohit’s bowling changes and field placements in that Test were also questionable.

ROHIT vs STOKES
Ben Stokes had an inexperienced spin bowling line-up but he rallied them with his lively presence on the pitch in Hyderabad. Stokes gave his bowlers assurance with attacking field placements, denying Indian batters easy singles while hurling himself at the ball as if his life depended on it. Rohit, on the other hand, it seemed was waiting for things to happen as Ollie Pope played his sweeps and reverse sweeps with ease while picking easy singles during his match-winning partnerships with wicketkeeper Ben Foakes and spinners Rehan Ahmad and Tom Hartley.

Stokes-led England won despite conceding a 190-run lead in the first innings and mind you, their victory was inspired by a batsman who hadn’t played cricket since the Lord’s Ashes Test and a spinner whose first Test ball was smashed for six. Stokes led England to a historic win that not only gave the tourists a 1-0 series lead but also may have answered whether the Bazball mindset can work in India.

Rohit’s only response to England’s lead before lunch was to sit back as the tourists piled on the runs with 39 singles, five twos, and three threes, adding 104 more. Their 420 was the most India had conceded in the second innings at home in 12 years, equalling the 500 in a day in Rawalpindi just over a year before.

Despite Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley aggressively attacking the Indian spin duo of Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel in the second innings, Rohit did not make any significant bowling changes. Neither did he walk up to the experienced spinners and urged them to change their angle of attack, something that was pointed out repeatedly by former India spinner Anil Kumble.

Meanwhile, Ollie Pope’s reliance on reverse sweeps went unchecked, resulting in England scoring 48 runs, including 10 boundaries. Rohit Sharma could only watch helplessly as the balls found their way to the boundary. Furthermore, the captain’s evident struggle with pressure was reflected in his body language. Unlike his predecessor Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma was unable to inspire and uplift the team when the chips were down.

WHAT NEXT?
The scrutiny of Rohit Sharma’s captaincy is not just about the loss itself, but also about how the team succumbed to the opposition. The pressure is mounting on Rohit to demonstrate that he can lead the Indian Test side with the same effectiveness as he has shown in limited-overs cricket.

Well, all is not lost but time is running out as Rohit Sharma-led India need to regroup with only a four-day gap in the first and second Test. Rohit needs to be proactive in his field placements and bowling changes to outsmart his counterpart Stokes in the remaining Tests. The upcoming Test matches against England will be crucial for the Indian skipper to prove his critics wrong and to establish himself as a versatile captain capable of securing victories across all formats of the game.