Rohit Sharma eyes to go past Gautam Gambhir in an elite list in Dharamsala

Indian skipper Rohit Sharma will have a chance to go past Gautam Gambhir when the former walks out to bat in the fourth Test against England in Dharamsala.

India have already won the series by winning the three Test matches. The Men in Blue won the second third and fourth Test to win the series. Their latest win in Ranchi was by five wickets when they chased down 192 to win in the second innings.

The fifth Test in Dharamsala will be played from March 7-11 and Rohit Sharma will have a chance to overtake Gautam Gambhie’s tally of Test runs. The southpaw scored 4154 runs in 58 Test matches. Rohit who has scored 4034 runs in his Test career so far needs 120 more runs to surpass Gautam Gambhir.

The Indian skipper has drawn a lot of accolades by winning the Test series without the likes of Virat Kohli, Mohammed Shami, Shreyas Iyer, and KL Rahul. Rohit has potentially won the series with one of the youngest Indian Test sides in terms of experience.

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Meanwhile, the BCCI in its latest release of a centrally contracted list of players excluded the likes of Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer. Rohit Sharma after the Ranchi Test win spoke about giving a chance to those players to play Test cricket who have the hunger to play in this format and succeed. The unwillingness of both Kishan and Iyer to play this format and also domestic cricket has forced them to face the axe.

Will Give Opportunities To Those Who Are Hungry: Rohit Sharma

“Jin logon ko bhookh hai, hum unhi logon ko mauka denge (We will give opportunities to only those who are hungry. Agar hunger nahi hai to unko khila ke koi matlab nahi hai(There’s no point in playing those who don’t have the hunger),” Rohit declared on Monday after a series-clinching win over England in the fourth Test in Ranchi.

Meanwhile, Jasprit Bumrah has returned to the Indian squad that was announced for the fifth Test on Thursday, February 29. The senior Indian pacer was rested from the fourth Test in Ranch as the BCCI decided to manage his workload. Akash Deep got his opportunity to make his Test debut and picked up three wickets bowling the tough length.

With the bat, keeper-batsman Dhruv Jurel made the most of his opportunities as did Shubman Gill. The duo held a match-winning 72-run stand to win the game for India in the second innings. Rohit chose to go ahead with Kuldeep Yadav for the last three Tests ahead of Axar Patel and he produced results by picking up 12 wickets in three Test matches.

He lauded the youngsters for playing the way they did and hoped for them to flourish in the format even more as he spoke in the post-match presentation.

“Really proud of everyone in the dressing room. There were a lot of challenges thrown at us but I thought we responded pretty well. We had different challenges in different Test matches and I thought we were quite composed in what we wanted to achieve and what we wanted to do on the field, very happy. Clearly tells me they (youngsters) want to be here, all the hard work they have done in the past, coming up playing domestic cricket and performing there, coming here it is a big challenge but when I look at them, talk to them and the responses that I get from them is quite encouraging” said Rohit.

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