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Sharma the batsman has promises to keep

Rohit Sharma has fine potential and watching him develop could be a compelling journey, writes Rohit Brijnath

— Photo: AP

ALIVE WITH POTENTIAL: Rohit Sharma has not a single century to his name, but the assurance he wears is evident.

Sometimes, no expertise is required to judge a player, no degree in footwork, no command of stroke mechanics. Sometimes you can just know, can just take a single peek at a player and, without being able to fully explain why, just know this could be something special. It’s a feeling that arrived when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga hit forehands with a cowboy’s cool at the Australian Open. It’s a feeling that came when Wayne Rooney was first sighted in Everton blue. It ’s a feeling that comes every time Rohit Sharma arranges himself at the crease. A feeling that here is promise. That is all.

Of all things in sport, few are more beautiful than an athlete alive with potential, but whose extent of it, and whose ability to tap of it, are uncertain. Sharma, like his bowling namesake who is earning headlines faster, has one immediate striking quality. Amidst better men, amidst the demanding cacaphony of international cricket, he does not look out of place.

This is not proof of any future greatness, but it is vital nevertheless. In almost every sport, the gulf between sport at its best and sport at any other level is vast, and requires a leap of talent and faith and confidence. You can teach back-lift, but you can’t teach poise.

Sharma is a boy, in every way. He is, take your pick, only 20 years young or only 11 one-dayers old, has not a single century to his name, but the assurance he wears was evident in his half-century against South Africa in the Twenty20 World Cup and 70 against Sri Lanka the other week. One won a match for India, both could be omens.

Sharma has time, not just in years, left in the game, but in the fractions of seconds to spare he has while playing the ball. He does not look rushed, which is not to say he is not in a rush. Cricket has long lost its leisureiness, and now it can be a furious, impatient game, where young men facing five dot ball are insistent on striking a boundary with the sixth.

Sharma will slow down, though he will not believe it now.

As a cricketing product, he is unfinished, unpolished, unsandpapered, his journey is only commencing.

But in Indian cricket — frantic, dramatic, oppressive, wondrous — these journeys can be thrilling. Will he learn patience, surround himself with sound friends who speak to him the unvarnished truth? Will he respond well to pressure, manage failure, handle bowlers once they have dissected his craft? Will he not get distracted by fame, remember that greatness is mostly an ascetic enterprise?

Delightful process

The great player once he has matured is a joy, but the assembling of him, the fitting together of pieces, the learning, the growing, is often the most delightful. So while we do not know where Sharma will go, or cannot confirm that he owns greatness, he looks a kid worth adventuring with. For him, the natural scepticism that builds within Indian watchers, having seen too many versions of “the next somebody” or “the new someone” come and go, can be put aside. He is, after all, that most powerful, persuasive of things: hope.

He is also young, and cricket is crying for men like him. It is not that older men, proud, practised, passionate, are not attractive viewing, and no disrespect is aimed their way for it is not their fault they have not been shifted. But cricket is looking a trifle grey. Teams are so few, and players stay on longer, and the turnover of personnel is slow. Experience has its own appeal, but sport is also oxygenated by the new and the young.

India has not produced a great Test batsman since Rahul Dravid in 1996, a great stylist since V.V.S. Laxman in 1996, a great one-day player since Sourav Ganguly in 1996 (his second coming), a very good batsman since Virender Sehwag in 2001. (Another Tendulkar we do not dare even speak of.)

Simply, India today is advertising for a fine batsman. And Rohit Sharma’s application for the job could be compelling viewing.

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