The many lives of Rohit Sharma in ODI cricket

Rohit, the batter, needed Rohit, the captain, to be unleashed.

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Rohit Sharma is normal now.

Just a player, one of the team, a dude amongst dudes. But just recently, he had the position of captain of a cricket team where hundreds of millions argue about every single decision.

And now he is a pleb, just another name on the team sheet.

Which is a big shift from being, Rohit Sharma, Indian captain. He retired from T20Is in the blaze of World Cup glory. His last act in Tests was dropping himself from the XI as captain, and saying, “this is not a retirement decision”. But it turned out to be pretty much a pre-retirement decision, and the last thing he would do as Test captain.

His ODI leadership was crowned - albeit with a smaller crown - with an unbeaten stroll through the Champions Trophy. But when India take on Australia on Sunday, Rohit will be back to the ranks of an ordinary player.

His reign as captain wasn’t so long that the length itself leaves a legacy. Nor was it short enough to be a footnote.

The way cricketing memories work, if his team had a different result in just one match, he would have been hailed as leader supreme. But India lost to Australia on November 19, 2023 in the World Cup final, and that will forever be on his resume.

The Indian side that Rohit took over was strong in all three formats. But it’s perhaps in ODIs - the only format he plays now - where Rohit left the most telling imprint.

When we look back at Rohit the captain, or Rohit the player, it is ODIs that is his legacy will be strongest. From Nohit to double-ton machine to the man willing to risk it all for a fast score, Rohit Sharma has lived many lives as an ODI player. With one more act to come.

Rohit Sharma has an extraordinary win percentage as ODI captain - behind only Clive Lloyd. Ahead of Ricky Ponting and even his predecessor, Virat Kohli.

It’s true that great teams make for great captains. Let me explain the Streak-Waugh Parallax. There is no inherent evidence to suggest Heath Streak would have been a lesser captain than Steve Waugh, if their roles and nationalities were swapped. Your results as captain mirror the quality of the players on your bus.

In Rohit’s case though, particularly in ODIs, he was one of the great players that made up his great team, and most crucially, one of the agents of change that elevated an already terrific side.

He did this by radically altering his own game once he became skipper. The extreme transformation is shown by our true values metric. (An explanation of our advanced stats can be found here).

Rohit became the regular ODI opener for India from the start of 2013. He assumed full-time captaincy at the start of 2022. Before 2013, Rohit was a middling player. Once he began opening, he transformed into an elite run-scorer. When he became captain though, he channelled the spirit of Virender Sehwag while still scoring well above par.

That is outrageous. A slogamorphosis.