Mumbai: Rohit Sharma’s aggressive approach with the bat might have drawn criticism for more misses than hits but Mumbai Indians head coach Mahela Jayawardene said the team has backed the former captain to bat at a similar tempo despite its perils.
Rohit stroked his way to a match-winning 45-ball 76 here on Sunday against Chennai Super Kings to banish an ordinary run of scores so far in this IPL season.
“Once he comes off like that, you know that he’s going to change the game and the momentum and that’s going to filter down to the rest of the boys as well, so pretty happy with the approach,” Jayawardene told the media in the post-match press conference.
“He never changed his approach. The intent was there from day one, even though he was failing, so that was good for us (in the way) that he was trying to play for the team and how he wanted to do it. We just backed him to do that,” he added.
Jayawardene said showing situational awareness is imperative and Rohit was able to execute his plans well against CSK.
“He’s been playing at this tempo for a while and that’s something that he understands himself. But at the same time, he will understand the game better in situational awareness as well,” he said.
“Like today, when Ash (Ravichandran Ashwin) came (on to bowl) as well, he (Rohit) took a little bit of time. He knew that he didn’t have to take (on) the long boundary straight away,” Jayawardene said.
“But those are experienced players making those good decisions out there. He’ll still play with that tempo and we’ve encouraged him to do that because he’s a damn good player, we want him to take control of that.
“He has got a couple of other guys who are going to follow him, who will bat around him as well (to) take that little bit of onus away from certain situations,” he added.
Jayawardene said MI built match-up situations in the game for Rohit in training to help him be in the right frame of mind.
“Rohit does bat in the nets, but there is a different preparation to how he goes about it. For him, there were a couple of good balls he got and then a couple of times that he tried things that didn’t work, so you try to fight through those situations,” he said.
“For a guy with that kind of experience, you literally leave them be and have those positive conversations and say that, ‘let’s do the matchups and then see how he gets going’ and keep those positive intent.
“That was the very few conversations Polly (Kieron Pollard) had with him, I had with him and he was quite okay about everything. He knows what he needs to do,” he added.
Jayawardene said there wasn’t much concern around Rohit’s string of ordinary scores. “It was just a timing thing that he gets going and then gets through that first three, four overs,” he said.
“Even after starts, he had a couple of shots which (he) probably just mistimed a little bit. But that’s how the game goes, you need to be understanding that. We’ve played enough cricket to know that as well,” he added.
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