'He used to get bored': Ravi Shastri reveals how he made Rohit Sharma a great Test batter

The former Indian head coach, Ravi Shastri, opened up about the advice he gave to Rohit Sharma in 2019 to adopt an attacking approach in Test cricket.

Rohit made his debut in Test cricket as a middle-order batter but was dropped from the format later. He made his return in 2019 as an opener under Ravi Shastri.

Read also: LSG vs SRH Weather and Pitch Report Of Ekana Stadium, Lucknow- IPL 2025, Match 61

SHORTS

View More

Your daily dose of cricket!

Loading...

Ravi Shastri’s advice to Rohit Sharma

Rohit Sharma’s white ball performance helped him return to the Test squad. The decision to get Rohit in the red-ball format was of Ravi Shastri.

Shastri promoted him to the top order and gave him freedom to play aggressively from the top in the longest form. That resulted in multiple centuries from the opener in red-ball format.

"Batting at four, five, this guy used to get bored. Then I started dwelling on the fact that he is so successful in one-day cricket? He likes to be out there early. I said, if he can go out there and do it, he has got enough time on his hands to play the quicks. He's got the shots against the quicks to take them on. The field is up, so Test cricket might be a honeymoon for him if he starts embracing it," he said as quoted by the ICC.

Shastri embraced the five centuries of Rohit during the ODI World Cup 2019. He scored 648 runs at an average of 81 in the World Cup.

Rohit Sharma as an opener

Rohit was getting out on 20s and 30s in his initial days in red-ball format. He was also throwing his wicket easily. Shastri wanted to put Rohit under pressure, and that's why he sent him up the order.

Shastri told him during the West Indies tour to open the innings in 2019 as he was coming from a great World Cup campaign.

"Then he came in for the first Test match, and he opened the innings, and he got a hundred. If I'm not mistaken, he got a big 100 in that first innings, and then he didn't look back because then he seemed to enjoy it,” Shastri stated.

According to Shastri, Rohit worked on his technique, and his best came in the England tour on the difficult pitches.

Rohit Sharma’s downfall in Test cricket

In the last three years, Rohit’s inconsistency in the red-ball format was the reason for his downfall. He was playing well in the Indian conditions, but in the overseas Test matches, he was getting out cheaply.

His ultra-aggressive approach in the long format dipped his form. In his last tour, He wasn’t passing the double-digit score at all.

He also didn't play the last Test match in Australia when the series was on the line, and ultimately, when India were seeing the new skipper in Test cricket, he announced his retirement from the format on May 7, just before the England tour in June.