Asia Cup 2018: 5 Team India members who have something to prove

Rohit Sharma

Still the Lord of this castle

India's Captain has nothing to prove in One Day Cricket. 3 double centuries is a pretty emphatic way to silence doubters. It seems like an open and shut case. It's simple, silly.

But nothing to do with Rohit Sharma has ever been simple. Apart from how he easy he makes batting look. Perhaps that is why he is revered and reviled in equal measure; there are those of us that are enamoured by the grace with which he bats, the beauty of his strokeplay. That is also why he has his detractors. They claim that he has been given too much rope, that he doesn't even look like he's trying, and that other players would have been discarded long ago. But look at all the pretty shapes he makes with the rope we cry. Yes, yes, it looks like he isn't trying, but that's the whole point. Well, of course, you'd discard lesser players, but Rohit is special.

And then he plays a shot so beautiful that you want to watch it on a loop for the rest of your life, and then, and then, and then he gets out? He gets out. And the detractors pounce, whether it was four five or hundred, and the admirers look at each other and say that it was a very good five, and the cycle goes on. On and on and on. Like listening to classical music, only for your CD to get scratched just as it was getting really good, just as you thought that you could lose yourself to it. It was a perverse cycle; us Rohit fans with our hopes dashed no matter what he did because he always seems to promise more, the Rohit detractors, frothing at the mouth, enraged after every failure because it never broke the status quo.

The status quo. Rohit Sharma will always be picked. The status quo. That is the status quo. That was the status quo.

Because he wasn't picked for the Test Series in England, was he? He wasn't even in the squad. He said that it didn't bother him, but it must have done. It had to have done. Because if it didn't, what his detractors say about him must be true. Or mustn't it? Maybe he compartmentalizes better, maybe at 31 years of age, he has accepted that his Test career is over. But still. To not even be picked in the squad? To not be called up as a reinforcement mid-series? It must have rankled just a little bit.

And so he finds himself as Captain. And, star batsman. With a Kohli shaped hole to fill. Maybe it's as simple as that. Maybe he just has something to prove because he's Captain. He enjoys captaincy; the IPL has proven that. And in the absence of Kohli, he must shoulder the weight of the batting order too. It makes sense that he would have something to prove for those reasons alone.

But with Rohit, it is never that simple. So I'll let you decide why he has something to prove, if he has something to prove. And I? I shall just watch him bat.