Boring press briefings

At the end of the day or at the end of a game, the captains are usually involved in a press briefing. An overwhelming majority of those briefings are not even worthy of listening to because it usually follows the same old cliché. This is not restricted only to cricket. This is the case across the entire world in every sport. Captains are not trained to handle the media. Their job is to go out onto the field and win games for the nation. The lack of training is telling in every media interaction. The losing captain will usually say that we did everything we could but it wasn’t good enough. The winning captain will gloat over everything that turned into gold when the fact is somewhere in the middle. However, Rohit’s media briefing after the Melbourne defeat was slightly different. It wasn’t one of the boring press briefings.

Rohit Sharma has been struggling with his batting for quite awhile. With Ashwin retired, there are calls for Rohit to retire as well. The minimum that is expected is for him to resign the captaincy. The defeat at Melbourne was the 5 Test India has lost in 6 games under Rohit without a single win. The Perth victory was achieved when Bumrah was the captain. As such, Rohit is under tremendous pressure. He is hurt and was letdown consistently by the batsmen. Rohit is not in a mood to either relinquish the captaincy nor to retire from the game.

Instead of revealed something that painted Rishabh Pant in a bad light. It wasn’t wrong because Pant deserved to be reprimanded after his twin atrocious shots opened the gates to the Australians.

The Pant reprimand or was it?

“Rishabh Pant obviously he needs to understand what is required from himself. More than any one of us telling him, it’s about him understanding and figuring out what’s the right way to go about it. In the past, he has given us lot of success doing what he does. As a captain, there’s a kind of mixed reaction to that. As captain, it’s hard to have a conversation when it has given him a lot of success as well. But it’s about him figuring out what is the right way to do things, it’s about situations as well. Certain situations of the game, if there’s a risk percentage, do you want to take that risk? Do you want to let the opposition come back into the game? Those are the things he needs to figure out himself.”

These are telling lines. It signifies that either Pant is not listening to what was being told to him or he does not really care about the situation the team finds itself in, quite often these days. This is infact a serious situation. Pant is a highly talented batsman who, if he applies himself, will end up with an average of over 50. He is that kind of a batsman. Test cricket is his calling card. If Pant is unwilling to adapt to the demands of the situation, something must be done. Not that long ago, against New Zealand in Bangalore, he played an innings that was uncharacteristic. It was what in cricketing parlance called controlled aggression. Yet, he scored at almost a run a ball.

A specialist batsman must be a bit more responsible

The twin shots at Melbourne will make anyone who has seen Pant bat in adversity, pull his hair. Especially, the ungainly scoop of Boland. His dismissals, triggered a collapse that was somehow arrested by Sundar and Nitish in the first innings but no one could in the second. At number 5, he is being treated as a specialist batsman. If he fails to understand the responsibility of a batsman, it is better he comes down the order at number 7 or 8. Sundar showed much restraint and must probably bat ahead of Pant.

Was Gill not dropped?

When the team was announced, everyone thought that Gill was dropped and rightly so. Gill hasn’t been scoring runs consistently. He had a good series against England in India and also he was the only batsman who scored in the 3^rd Test against New Zealand. However, his overall numbers shows that the rope given to him has extended infinitely. The decision to drop him was justified. However, it seems that he wasn’t dropped.

“I had a chat with him [Gill]. There’s no way when you’re leaving someone out, for whatever reason it is, you will not have a chat,” Rohit said. “The chat with him was clearly he was not dropped. [We] just wanted to have extra bit of cushion in the bowling and we opted for an allrounder, which shouldn’t weaken our batting line-up.”

Rohit Sharma confuses everybody and is confused himself.

Wrapping up boring press briefings

These two comments were significant in an otherwise boring press briefings. It would have been even better if Rohit had said that Gill was indeed dropped on performance and that Pant has not been learning from his indiscretions. For once, let the captains say whatever they thought. This Indian team has been balancing on a thin rope for a very longtime. An insipid England was the only team to lose comprehensively. Jaiswal covered the failures of other batsmen in that series. No one has come to the rescue in Australia and against New Zealand.

Rohit himself is guilty of still hanging onto the captaincy despite a horrible record for an Indian captain next only to Dhoni.

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