Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan did not mince words as he said that Rohit Sharma would have struggled to make the Test XI in the second-half of the 2024 calendar year without the captaincy tag. Recalling Rohit’s decision to opt out of the final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Sydney in January this year after averaging an abysmally low 6.20 across three matches on the tour, Pathan said that he was compelled to support his ex-India teammate in an interview during the match.
“Rohit Sharma is an amazing player in white-ball cricket, but his average in Test cricket that year was 6, so we said that if he was not the captain, he would not have had a place in the team, and this is true,” Pathan said in a teaser video released by Lallantop on Wednesday.
In eight Test matches last year post the T20 World Cup win, Rohit scored only 164 runs with a solitary half-century. Declaring that he wouldn’t be retiring despite opting out of the match, Rohit spoke to broadcasters Pathan and Jatin Sapru on January 5 and said: “This is what I say. Stand down. I will say a few words, fifty words will be made out of it. So basically, runs are not coming from my bat, I am not in form, it is an important match, we need players in form, the boys in our batting are not in form, so you cannot carry too many out-of-form players in the team.
“It was difficult for me to take this decision but if everything is put in front of us, then this decision was sensible, and I will not think too much ahead. What the team needed at this time, this was the only thought, and there was no other thought apart from that,” Rohit added.
‘We were polite because he was our guest’
“People say that we supported Rohit Sharma more than necessary. Of course, when someone comes to interview on your broadcasting channel, you will not misbehave with them, right? You have invited him, so you will behave politely. When Rohit came to interview, we were, of course, polite, and we had to show that, because he was our guest. So that was connected and said we were supporting him, but it was we who said…we had said that he should keep fighting, but that said, he should not have had a place in the playing XI. If he was not the captain of the team, he would have been dropped,” Pathan said.
Rohit returned to form in white-ball cricket and led India to the Champions Trophy title in March before calling it quits from the longest format in May during the IPL 2025 season.
