Sunil Gavaskar: It was never going to be easy for Rohit and Kohli to make comeback on bouncy Perth pitch

Over the years, a significant misconception among Indian cricket fans is that if a player is replaced as captain, he will attempt to undermine the new captain by not performing to the best of his ability. Nothing can be further from the truth, for the simple fact is that if a captain has been replaced and then doesn’t perform, he could be out of the team altogether.

So, no player, however aggrieved he may feel at losing the captaincy, is ever going to underperform deliberately.

With that misconception still going strong, many are questioning if young Shubman Gill will be able to handle two former captains, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, who are part of the three-match One-Day International series against Australia. Gill has gone out of his way to say that his equation with them hasn’t changed simply because he is the captain now. If anything, he will only benefit by having these two stalwarts by his side. Both would be happy to offer suggestions if asked, and what could be better for a captain leading in this format for the first time than to have two of the greatest ODI players playing in his team?

It was never going to be easy for both to make a comeback on a bouncy Perth pitch after a few months’ gap. It’s not as if the other players who have been playing regularly have performed any better. The international schedule for India is a very tight one, and the mingling of the three formats never helps.

The batters have to adjust to the bounce of the white ball and, with it, the bat speeds to be able to hit more fours and sixes. The bowlers also have to bowl a different length than in red-ball cricket. Regardless of a player’s experience, adjusting takes time. So, it would have been nice if those who were not part of the Test series against West Indies had been sent earlier to Australia to play a couple of warm-up games and be better prepared for the steep bounce in Perth and other Aussie pitches.

That said, the white-ball series is really only to fulfil the commitment to the broadcast rights holder, for the result of both the ODI and T20I series is not going to count for anything. There are no points on offer, nor is there a prestigious Cup to be won.

The broadcasters have a huge role to play, with the viewership running up to millions. It is because of the huge amounts they buy the rights for that they have to try and recoup their investment, even if they don’t make much money out of it. That said, the cricket must never suffer, and so the spin of the coin mustn’t decide the game. Suppose there is going to be heavy dew. In that case, it is clear that unless the team batting first puts up a humongous total on the board, it will not be able to defend it, with the bowlers handicapped by having to bowl with a ball made wet and slippery by the dew. So, the authorities can make the effort to have day games instead of day-night games whenever possible.

India found the wet ball tough to bowl with in the ongoing Women’s World Cup and lost two games where they put up a big total, which they would have won if they had been played during the day. So, the toss made a difference. They still have a couple of games to play and qualify for the semis.

If they do get there, then the coach must tell them to play smart cricket and not throw their wickets and the match away by going for the glory shots, whether batting first or chasing. Not too many Indian girls, apart from skipper Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana, are capable of smashing the sixes, so the others could be well advised to be less ambitious and not throw the game away looking for sixes and getting caught well inside the boundary. Otherwise, like it happened with the men’s team, which at least got to the final, the fans will be heartbroken by another cup going somewhere else.

Published on Oct 21, 2025