Playing a pull shot is not everyone’s cup of tea. It takes a lot. You need to be at the right place at the right time, even a little misjudgement can cause your wicket. It is more like difficult math. An art that not everyone can learn or do.
Thanks to the uneven turfs at Borivali, Rohit does it. Does it with so much elegance.
Normally, you see the bowler pitching it up and the batter quickly reads the length, moves and picks it up from the outside off and dismisses over the midwicket. Most of the players do that. Ricky Ponting does it and it’s poetry. In India, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid do it well too. Should I call them underrated poetry?
Rohit Sharma is unique. He looks lazy with every single shot, but this laziness adds more value to the game, and once he gets going, this laziness turns into slow motion art, a perfect circle of greatness. It is surreal and magical.
READ: That Rohit Sharma’s lofted straight drive
It’s more like a glance, distracting the pace of the bowler rather than creating his own. There isn’t much of a back-lift too. Mostly because he doesn’t have the time, but it’s enough. As the ball comes close to him, you see him move a bit across and waits for a moment. His back leg goes on air exactly the moment when the ball gets in touch with the bat. Then he goes on toes with his back leg. The front leg though doesn’t move at all until the ball hits the ball. Then it juggles pointing the off-side depending upon where he hits the ball.
It is more of a glance rather than a punch. He frees his bottom hand to reach out to the ball, and the same hand provides the momentum to reach the ball. A swirl and a twist with his wrists. His hands then stop for a second at straight to his face before finishing horizontally to his head. While playing behind, Rohit Sharma twirls his wrists whereas while playing towards the square or mid-wicket, he elegantly drops his bottom hand to stay in control of the shot.
At times, he likes to lift his front leg to balance himself, and the leg stands in the straight line as his bat and the hands. There is a whole-body twist that defines the angle.
More of the times, during the follow-through, the bat doesn’t go behind his head, and that is the beauty of his pull but at times, the shot demands more release and does ends behind. The beauty of the shot lies in the way he relaxes his body after settling in to play the shot, and how his head moves accordingly as he relaxes. It is as blissful to the eyes as watching the flowers bloom in slow motion. That’s how he moves.
No, Rohit’s pull doesn’t stop within this way alone. He has pull shot for every single delivery and who knows we might see him play one for a yorker too. He can pull anywhere and where ever he wants to. He can even pull with one hand. Even while jumping.
It is a risky shot. Especially the way he plays. A slight misjudgement could take a toll on his legs. For Rohit Sharma, though, he doesn’t slap the ball and that saves him from a lot of injuries. His back leg toes do the work of balancing while his front leg helps him with the direction and the control.
More often, this is the same shot that could cost his wicket. Since he only glances the ball rather than slapping it, the ball tends to fall short. At times, there is a misjudgement as well. Rohit puts himself in danger, unlike other batters but you can never tell when that happens. If you keep trying to make him play the same shot, he might not give away an opportunity if it is his day and with white-ball cricket, Rohit’s day is every day unless he proves otherwise.
Rohit stays in how dangerous and the beauty of Rohit lies there. He enjoys insecurity and he perfects them, travels right at the edge of the threshold while crossing the line at moments like this. While players #ViratKohli makes us all fall in love with his traditional shots, Rohit Sharma keeps poking us, telling us how crossing the line a bit with the traditional shots look great too.
