Mumbai: Former India coach Ravi Shastri has reflected on how the decision to turn Rohit Sharma into an attacking Test opener initially came about.
Rohit first entered the Test setup as a middle-order batter, with the Indian great only moving to the top of the order and becoming a world-class opener due to an inkling from Shastri that he could make a greater impact early in an innings.
Shastri spoke in depth about Rohit with host Sanjana Ganesan on the most recent episode of The ICC Review, with the India legend revealing the impact he made on the recently retired Test great early in his tenure as coach.
Rohit was more known as a white-ball performer during the early stages of his career, but the decision by Shastri to promote the hard-hitting batter to the top of the order in 2019 paid immediate dividends as he found a new lease on life and thrived in the longest format.
"Batting at four, five, this guy used to get bored," Shastri recalled.
"Then I started dwelling on the fact, why is he so successful in one-day cricket? He likes to be out there early. I said, if he can go out there and do it, he has got enough time on his hands to play the quicks. He's got the shots against the quicks, to take them on. The field is up, so Test cricket might be a honeymoon for him if he starts embracing it," Shastri said.
Shastri said he thought up the concept of Rohit as a Test opener during the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup in 2019 when he smashed five centuries and finished the tournament as the leading run-scorer with 648 runs at an average of 81.
His form at that event saw Shastri float the idea of Rohit as Test opener to then captain Virat Kohli and there was no looking back as he hit twin tons in his first Test at the top of the order against South Africa and scored nine of his 12 Test centuries from that point on.
"He'd batted enough at five and six and he wasn't here and he wasn't there," Shastri said.
"He would get his 20s or 30s and throw it away. (I thought) let's put him under pressure and send him up (the order). And I remember telling him in the West Indies 'we want you to open'," he said.
"This was (August) 2019, if I'm not mistaken, after that World Cup. He'd had a great World Cup, so his form was very good. And he might have thought of it for a little while, but he was OK," Shastri said.
"Then he came in for the first Test match and he opened the innings and he got a hundred. If I'm not mistaken, he got a big 100 in that first innings and then he didn't look back because then he seemed to enjoy it, the former India coach said.
"He figured it out and what I must say he worked a lot on his technique because I thought his best batting was in England where you really got to play a little differently and especially he had to play with soft hands and could leave (the ball) a lot," Shastri said.
"And he worked on it, which was very good. So, suddenly from nowhere, he was setting up games for you," Shastri added.
