December 15, 2023:
Social media was abuzz as Mumbai Indians dropped a bombshell announcing Hardik as their new IPL captain replacing Rohit, the captain who led them to five titles. The writing was on the wall and I felt that his T20I career was over. He hadn't appeared for India in the format since the disastrous 2022 SF defeat. Meanwhile, his T20 returns in IPL had hit rock bottom. I would have been happy and contented had he retired from the format, then and there, having won a world title and with 4 centuries and multiple records.
January 7,2024:
Like in 2013,things changed in January,for Rohit. He was named captain for the T20Is against Afghanistan, much to the anguish of quite a few folks(both online and offline). That announcement meant that he was going to captain India in another world event. He duly started the series with two ducks and in the third game, he was batting on a tacky track with the score reading 22/4. I had hoped it hadn't come down to this. After November 19, like most Indian fans, I had tried to shut myself out from the game and was reasonably successful at that. I didn't want him to play any more T20 cricket because it hurt on a personal level seeing him struggle. Scratchiness is something you don't associate with Rohit's batting. As I followed that final game against Afghanistan, on mobile,without daring to switch on the television, he turned his innings around like only he could. In addition to compiling a century, he returned again to smash in super overs, twice. He decided he wasn't going to lose that day. It wasn't the usual Rohit, it was the steely version of him, the one who was ready for a scrap and he won the game on his own. Was it a false dawn? I always believed I knew Rohit's batting like I knew my name. On that day, I realized that I didn't. I still wasn't going to let his performance impact my mental well-being. Not again.
June 24,2024:
I watched from a distance as Rohit was having another mediocre IPL with few highlights here and there. For the first time since IPL's inception, I wasn't invested in a team. For the first time in years, a Rohit failure didn't bother me like it used to. I thought it would hold me in good stead leading upto the inevitable failure that was on the horizon- the WT20.
I didn't catch a single ball of India's campaign until India played Australia, in a game India didn't have to necessarily win to qualify. I knew Rohit was struggling but given the situation India found themselves in, I wasn't really bothered about Rohit. Nothing he was going do that day was about to have an impact on me, or so I thought.
As a kid growing up, a game in Sharjah that happened in the year 1998, left an indelible mark on me. No, it is not the game you are thinking about. It was not the "Desert Storm". It was the "Olonga" game. A few days before the match in question, Olonga made Sachin Tendulkar dance to his tunes before dismissing him. This was the 1998 Sachin. So when they faced off again, all eyes were on Sachin's response. What followed was a brutal takedown in which balls kept disappearing. That was when it imprinted on my mind that when great players decide to unleash fury, no ground was small enough and no attack was good enough to contain them.
Unlike Sachin, Rohit was nursing his wounds for the previous 7 months and when the moment arrived, he just exploded. In modern cricket, there is no such thing as revenge across formats, but millions who saw Rohit bat that day knew that it was personal. Possibly, Mitchell Marsh felt the same too, because he never let Maxwell bowl, even when there was a left hander at one end. Coincidentally, the only bowler who escaped Rohit's wrath was Hazelwood. He was the one who bore most of Rohit's brunt on that fateful November afternoon in 2023.
Next up was England, in Semi Finals. Well, now there was a solid case for a payback -
Same Opponent, same format and the same knock-out stage.
June 27,2024:
Just like in Adelaide in the last WT20 edition, England won the toss and chose to bowl. Just like that night, India managed to cross the 165 mark courtesy some pyrotechnics at the death. It was 168 then and 171 now. But this was on a pitch with more demons. Just like he did against Trent Boult at Wankhede in 2023, Rohit laid down the marker in Guyana, by reverse sweeping Rashid's first ball on a pitch England later found Axar and Kuldeep too hot to lay bat on ball. Post 2017, Rohit against spinners on a slow track in T20s used to end always one way. It ended that way here too, undone by a googly. Except here, he had supremely controlled the Indian innings which threatened to go nowhere thanks to the pitch and a rain intervention. Boundaries were summoned at will all around the ground and he didn't get tied down during the middle overs when boundaries were hard to come by. When Rohit was finally dismissed by Rashid, he admonished himself because he had picked the variation and he should have deposited out of the ground. He didn't know at that time that India already had enough.
No England batsman crossed 25 and they were thrashed by 68 runs. The ghosts of 2022 were put to rest. Only one was left.
29 June, 2024:
A madcap Indian start followed by a flurry of dismissals at the top of the order, a period of consolidation led by Virat Kohli who was unable to find boundaries post Power play.
This all looked familiar. But unlike the Final I will never mention, there were quite a few cameos, including one from Shivam Dube who was backed to the hilt throughout the tournament. A challenging total was put up and one sensed this could be the day.
Early wickets, even when it brought back eerie memories instilled belief only for everything to be vanquished by the end of the 15th over. I wasn't ready to endure another heartbreak and switched off. I didn't see what followed, some call it divine intervention, I will just call it the "Bumrah" intervention. When I switched on the television again, with renewed hope, South Africa needed 20 from 12 and Miller was off strike. Then Arshdeep turned into RP Singh of 2007,except the edged boundary, of course.
With 16 to get from Hardik's final over, I could barely watch but I felt calm. Surely Hardik, who craves for the big stage, had this covered. Redemption, for almost no fault of his, was in sight. It still needed an astonishing assist from his Mumbai Indian team-mate Surya Kumar Yadav to extinguish South Africa's last real hope. Surya would catch one more and that catch eventually signalled that Indians were not going to be denied.
Rohit made his name as a player against South Africa in a Twenty20 World Cup and now he had etched his name in history books as the first Indian captain in 17 years to win the WT20 trophy.
Perhaps, it was destiny, that Rohit's T20 international career has ended the way it started - as a World Champion!
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