Mumbai: Rohit Sharma’s career took a turn when M.S. Dhoni asked him to open for India in the 2013 Champions Trophy. From being a talented youngster, he became a performer and former India chief selector Kris Srikkanth believes that the limited-overs deputy is one of the best in the business.
Speaking on Star Sports show Cricket Connected, Srikkanth heaped praise on Rohit Sharma, “I think I would rate him as one of the greatest all-time one-day openers in world cricket. What’s the greatest quality Rohit Sharma is that he goes for these big hundreds and double hundreds, that is something amazing. In a one-day cricket match, you will go 150, 180, 200, just imagine where you are going to take the team to, that’s the greatness about Rohit Sharma. He is definitely, probably is in the top 3 or 5 all-time greatest openers as far as one-day cricket is concerned.”
Former teammate Irfan Pathan had earlier said that there has always been more to the stylish opener than just talent.
The former India all-rounder Irfan spoke about how Rohit always worked hard in early years even if his body language suggested otherwise, “Lot of people are mistaken when they see a guy who has a lot of time and he is slightly more relaxed than compared to Rohit. Then you say he needs to work hard! Same things were said about Wasim Jaffer when you look at his aura when he used to run very relaxedly when he used to bat he had a lot of time and we used to think � why isn’t he working hard � but actually, he was working really hard.
“Similarly with Rohit, from outside we used to think he might need to work harder, he might need to put more application. Whenever you talk to Rohit Sharma, he used to always talk about sensible things, he used to always talk about working hard and he used to always talk about the team first as well, that is why you see some of the results he got at the captain of the Mumbai Indians team. He got the beating of not playing the World Cup and then came back really hard because of a strong mindset after 2012.”
