Rohit Sharma, who sustained an injury during India’s tour of New Zealand earlier this year and missed the ODI and Test series, should have a realistic assessment of his injury-prone body. He did not even care to lend a serious ear to either Shastri or Ganguly who apprehended his injury conditions and advised against making a comeback to the IPL with his injury.

There were only suggestions and indications that Rohit risked his injury by dragging himself on the IPL but no party — either the player or his franchise or the board — came out with an emphatic communication about what the future plans. Had Rohit not played in the business end of the IPL and given the Australia tour a miss, one would have expected a less reaction. But since he played for the franchise and not for the country, the criticism is understandable. The franchise can still be spared because it cares little more than seeing the cricketing returns. But why didn’t the board act on time?

Was BCCI practising what it preached?

If Rohit clearly made a wrong judgment on his injury that has now seen him losing a good opportunity to do justice to his batting skills in Tests (he now averages 46 plus in the red-ball format with three hundreds in the last six innings) and improve the numbers in Australia (he averages only 31 in Tests Down Under with two fifties), the BCCI also is to blame for not taking a strong stand on the player to serve the national interest.

Rohit is no fringe player and since he is a BCCI employee, the board would have done a great service to him and the nation by asking him to stay out of the IPL after he injured himself. If Ganguly knew that Rohit was risking his fitness ahead of a crucial overseas tour, why didn’t he tell him straight to put the country above the franchise, especially when the safety rules in times of the pandemic are a top priority? Rohit needed enough rest but he, along with the cricketing heads, ignored the fact even while knowing the facts quite well. Ganguly said on the Rohit issue that “it’s the BCCI’s job to get their best players on the park”. Did the board practise what it preached?

And if all quarters knew that Rohit is not hundred percent fit, why was he added to the Test squad at all? Four days after his name was added to the Test squad, the BCCI chief said Rohit was only 70 percent fit? This defies all logic.

How can an injured cricketer say he will manage shorter things?

That a scientific approach is still lacking in one of the planet’s cricketing powerhouses becomes clear when one sees how vaguely Rohit spoke about his injury on November 21. In an interview with PTI, the opening batsman said his injured hamstring was feeling “absolutely fine” and that he wanted to be “clear in his mind” that he remains fully fit for the Australia tour. He also said that he conveyed to the MI the message that he could manage the situation “quite nicely” since it was the shortest format. “Once I made my mind clear, it was all about focusing on what I needed to do,” the cricketer said.

Nothing perhaps could have been more vague than this. To say that T20 cricket is less demanding physically because it is shorter in tenure compared to the other two formats is completely misleading. By “managing” the situation in the IPL, Rohit was only serving the short-term interest for he should have known that hoping to play in a full-fledged tour of Australia with partial fitness is a no-brainer. He should admit before his fans soon that he made a terrible error in judging the situation and his fitness, worse than even a tail-ender leaving a straight ball heading into the timber.