The Virat Kohli-Rohit Sharma retirement debate is an ongoing one. Rohit’s presence at an award function last night has yet again reignited the subject. First and foremost, we can’t club the two players together. Both of them look fit and raring to go, but they are individual athletes and can’t be clubbed together. Not just them, no two athletes can be clubbed together in matters of performance.
Second, retirement is a highly personal decision. No one can come and tell me to stop my journalism. No one can go and tell an actor to stop acting. Similarly, no one can go and tell Rohit and Virat to retire. Yes, the selectors are well within their rights to change the captain. They have done so, and Shubman Gill is now the leader. But retirement is a very different thing. It is on Rohit and Virat to put themselves up for selection. It is a personal call, and no second person has a say in it. Post that, whether or not the selectors pick them in the team is a very different matter. They are well within their rights to say we will put our names forward. If you don’t think we are good enough, drop us. Let the selectors take the hard calls if they want to.
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Coming to this series-by-series thing. Frankly, it doesn’t work. So what if Virat Kohli fails in the three ODIs against Australia? Does it make him a lesser player? Suryakumar Yadav did not score in the Asia Cup. Has he been made captain for the Australia T-20 series or not? Shubman Gill was very average in the SENA countries ahead of the England tour. Was he not made captain, and did he not deliver? It was a call based on potential and not pure numbers. If things are all mechanical, we don’t need former cricketers to select a cricket team. A group of number crunchers can do the job and close things out.
Virat and Rohit can’t be judged by runs in Australia. It will depend on how they shape up, fitness, hunger and more. Even with the bat, it will not be just about runs. Suppose Rohit is asked to play the same high-risk, high-reward game by the management, there is every chance that he could get out early on occasion. But then that’s what the team needs, and he will need to be given the extra cushion to play aggressively at the top of the order.
I personally believe it is essential that these two stalwarts are given the nine games to be played between now and January. See how they go and how they bat. Check how they are on the field and what the issues are. Sit them down and work out how they can be involved with domestic cricket to give them the much-needed game time. The idea can’t be to get rid of them. The idea should be to make the most of them and the game time that they have left. They are playing for India based on merit and merit alone and should continue to play as long as they have the game to do so.
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