India

Does Rohit Sharma get out more beautifully than anyone else?

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We met up with someone on the other side of a mountain recently. It was in a town. We were going to get something to eat.

Through the wonders of modern technology, the other person sent us a pin on a map to indicate their location. We arrived a little while later and did the same thing at the same spot, assuming they’d wandered off. Turns out they hadn’t and the two of us sat confused on opposite sides of the same concrete barrier for five minutes or so, virtually within touching distance. As a result of this technologically-induced incompetence we have resolved to wander around shouting the other person’s name should we find ourself in a similar situation in the future.

Meeting can be done better than this. At the minute, Rohit Sharma’s bat is meeting the ball in a way that would be hard to improve upon. In this instance we suspect the positive influence of technology. The process just looks too smooth and automatic for a human to be in any way involved.

Rohit holds his drone bat and it simply gets on with things. It must be connected to the drone ball via The Internet of Things and between the two of them, they work out precisely when and where to meet up.

This has been happening all tournament, but it only really became unignorably evident with Rohit’s silky dismissal against Sri Lanka.

Rarely has a false shot showcased such certainty and precision. This was not human error. This was artificial intelligence deliberately doing something you didn’t want it to do and doing that thing absolutely perfectly. Even as the ball was being released, Rohit was already chipping it directly to mid off.

Rohit Sharma gets out beautifully.

Similar deliveries:

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14 comments

    1. Notts were doing so worryingly well earlier on, that I closed the page in disgust and forgot to check the score at Close until just now..! Leach and Bess seem to have bailed them out there… now they just have to polish them off

      1. Making a real hash of this… even if we do somehow set a decent target I can hear the cries of ‘excessive turn’ already…

      2. That scorecard looks disgusting… what the hell is going on down there?! I didn’t realise the “Ciderabad” pitch was still in use… but Ashwin appears to be more or less unplayable and I presume this Patterson-White geezer is Notts’ second spinner..? (Can’t quite bring myself to listen to the commentary, hiding behind the NZ-India match instead…)

      3. Well OK, that looks a bit brighter with tea approaching… having said I wasn’t listening, my comment coincided with the rain break at Old Trafford, and Overton seemed to be hitting things – so I did tune in, and caught the latter half of a brisk 50 partnership (of all things)! But yes, it does sound like “trial by spin” all round, and despite all those single-digit scores stinking up the card, Azhar Ali would appear to have given a masterclass in how to cope with that…

        … hence with two down, Ashwin has promoted himself up the order, as the batsman best equipped to cope. The provincial commentary team acted as if this was the most extraordinary thing ever to happen on a cricket field, forgetting that Ashwin has been known to bat at 6 for India {rolls eyes}

      4. An in the end an out-and-out fast bowler claims the standout figures for the innings. Ain’t cricket great?

      5. Yeah, I know 🙂

        Hey – not that it mattered in this case, but I must have missed the law change which allows a team to call up a sub to bat in the second innings if someone is injured in the first. Does that only apply to head injuries..? – and is it only in county games?

  2. Reading the related link on Nohit
    and it seems the world has turned upside down in 5 years:

    What all of this means for England’s World Cup chances
    In a relatively low scoring one-day game, England are actually all right. If they get organised, we think they’ll at least give most sides a run for their money. What they can’t do – and we don’t see this changing any time soon – is win a flat track runfest. It’s just completely beyond their ken

    1. Extreme, isn’t it? While the current emphasis at times seems a little heavy, it is at least more appropriate for modern one-day cricket.

  6. Rohit trivia – as a 12 year old, on seeing an endless queue of batsmen hoping for selection to a coaching clinic, Rohit lined up with the bowlers. Bowled for 3-4 years, when the coach suggested that he wasn’t too bad a batsman either. By the time Rohit was 17, everybody in Mumbai knew about this kid who bats like a dream.

    Also, I guess most readers here would know the time when 15 year old Sachin showed up at the MRF pace academy only to be asked by Dennis Lillee to stick to batting.

    1. Thanks for that nugget… like you say, the Tendulkar story is pretty well-known, but I didn’t realise Rohit was originally a bowler – when Pandya got injured today, the commentators and pundits were all trying to work out who Kohli could turn to for the extra overs if needed, and Rohit’s name was mentioned but not seriously considered. Does he not even turn his arm over at first-class level these days? I’m gonna have to look that up 🙂

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