Rohit Hit Hooray

Basking in the afterglow of yet another IPL win for the Mumbai Indians, the vice captain of the Indian team sets himself up for a bigger challenge in the ICC World Cup.

- Rajiv Singh

Scoring nine runs off six balls in any T20 tournament is not a Herculean task. In the Indian Premier League (IPL), especially, where bowlers are sent on a leather hunt, it is par for the course. That’s exactly what defending champion Chennai Super Kings (CSK) would have thought before the last over of the IPL final against Mumbai Indians (MI) in Hyderabad. Veteran Aussie Shane Watson, who had reserved his best for the big occasion, was at the crease. Skipper MS Dhoni was sitting in the team dugout, displaying no signs of nerves. On an exciting Sunday evening in May, the ‘yellow army’ was cheering lustily for CSK to lift the trophy for a record fourth time.

What happened, though, was not normal. MI captain Rohit Sharma handed the ball over to Sri Lankan pace genius Lasith Malinga, who was hammered for 20 runs in his third over and a dozen in his second. The commentators were stunned; MI fans at the stadium, with over 39,000 spectators, were aghast; and millions of TV viewers found the move absurd. Sharma, it seemed, had cracked under pressure.

The gambit paid off. Malinga conjured up a mesmerising over to redeem himself; MI pipped CSK by one run to win the IPL for a record fourth time. Sharma quietly, once again, demonstrated his mental toughness and astute leadership.

“Not taking stress,” he told Forbes India in Mumbai a few days before the start of the IPL, “comes naturally to me.” “It’s rare for me to panic,” reckoned Sharma, as he prepared for a photoshoot at Hotel Trident in March.