Rohit Sharma – Started his T20 journey as a champion, and leaves as one

Three different images that tell a great story. In the first, Rohit Sharma is lying face down on the Kensington Oval turf, punching the ground moments after India have sealed a nerve-shredding 7-run win over South Africa in the T20 World Cup final. In the second frame, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, he’s flat on his back, staring at the sky. You can see the beard flecked with grey and the exhaustion on his face. Then, an hour later, behind the microphone at the press conference, he can’t stop grinning, even as he announces that he has played his last T20 match for India.

Indian cricket-watchers with streaks of white in the hair will remember a fourth picture. It’s the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007, and India must beat South Africa, the hosts, in Durban to progress to the last four. Rohit Sharma has been playing international cricket for less than three months when he arrives at the crease to face his first ball in T20Is. India are reeling at 33-3. He makes a solid 40-ball 50 to lead the side to a respectable total. But that’s not the snapshot we’re talking of.

That comes in South Africa’s reply, with the score 30-3. At the non-striker’s end is Justin Kemp, a hitter of monstrous power who had smashed an 89-ball century against India in an ODI less than a year earlier. When Mark Boucher taps the ball towards cover and sets off, Kemp responds. That’s when you see a lithe figure in light blue sprint in, pick up the ball and throw the stumps down at the striker’s end while in mid-air. For millions of cricket fans, that is their first Rohit memory.

All these years later, he leaves the T20 stage on the back of an unbeaten tournament – eight wins in nine matches, with the game against Canada washed out by the Florida weather. Only twice, in the opening-round game against Pakistan and in the final, were India genuinely pushed into a corner.