Facing Dale Steyn: A learning curve for Rohit Sharma

Rohit Sharma was ll at sea facing up to Dale Steyn

Imagine a student who is studying for his final term exams. He has seen to it that all the assignments have been dealt with, mugs up everything that is there to be crammed, and in fact, can repeat stuff in his sleep. He has even done well in all the class tests. On the day of the examination, he feels confident.

The papers are handed out. He looks at the paper, looks at his fellow classmates, and gives out a sigh of exasperation. Somehow, even after all that pre-exam hullabaloo, he is taken completely off-guard.

The teacher who set the paper was probably out of his mind. He had taught the students numbers as classwork, gave them factorization as assignment. Still that was manageable. But he asks them to fetch the 7^th root of unity in the paper. And that was only the first question.

He reads the questions one by one, and finds that each seemed more alien to him than the previous one. He leaves the first question, barely reads the second, skips the third, swears on reading the fourth, and then loses count. Then he looks around again, sees that others are equally clueless, and starts laughing.

Rohit Sharma couldn’t have felt any different. Fresh from an ODI-double hundred and chasing down 350 plus scores as if they were girls and not targets, he had expected better. But that wasn’t to be.

India was set a 350 plus target again, he was opening the batting, he was almost done with his checklist. But, then it wasn’t in India. Back home, it was like stick-cricket but in South Africa, he was on the verge of complaining that the questions were out of syllabus.

He tried his best to attempt, but he just couldn’t. He looked at his equally clueless fellow beings, and smiled. Smile that was a mix of acknowledgement and embarrassment about the same thing: I have no clue.

The deliveries came his way, but just at the last moment, swung and whizzed past his bat, making him look like a guy who had raised his hand for a high-five but isn’t acknowledged, so he scratched his head instead with the raised hand, 16 times in a row.

Every delivery was similar to the previous in almost all aspects, including play-ability. In fact, had Ravi Shastri been commentating during that period, even he would have felt embarrassed repeating the same cliches 16 times over.

But Sharma could take heart in the fact that Steyn was equally exasperated and bored with the proceedings. So much so that it finally came down to Steyn begging Rohit to at least make contact. It is not everyday that you rub the the world’s best bowler off in the wrong way, much like :

Teacher (irritated after a bunch of unanswered questions) : Haven’t you studied anything?

Student: I have, but this topic hasn’t been taught to us.

(an excuse, like a leading edge, which irritates even more)

Now there are talks going on about Sharma saying that the South African bowlers couldn’t dismiss him, so ran him out instead.

He should be thankful that after Ishant, there was another Sharma in Mohit who saved the day for him. Apparently, the safety limit is one Sharma per match.