Salman Butt Backs Rohit Sharma To Come Good In The Upcoming Test Series Against England
Published - 01 Jul 2021, 08:15 PM | Updated - 23 Aug 2024, 12:48 AM
Former Pakistan opener Salman Butt has backed Indian opener Rohit Sharma to come good in the upcoming Test series against England.
Rohit Sharma was the pick of the Indian batters in the ICC World Test Championship final against a high-quality seam-bowling attack of New Zealand on what Salman Butt rated as one of the toughest pitches in Test cricket in the past few years.
Sharma may not have got a half-century in either innings but he looks compact against the moving ball.
He employed the age-old mantra of batting in English conditions as he watched the ball early and played it as late as possible.
Just like the Australian tour where Rohit Sharma regularly gave good starts without converting it into a big knock as he does in white-ball cricket, the same was the case in the WTC final as he got dismissed for 34 [68] and 30 [81] in both innings.
However, Salman Butt reckoned that Rohit Sharma is too good a player to keep making the same mistakes and a big score is around the corner for the ‘Hitman’
‘’I believe he’s done pretty well. In Australia, he provided decent starts. He’s a free-flowing stroke player so his innings give you an early advantage. He isn’t a slogger who can get out anytime but instead is very compact. If you see there was so much swing [in the WTC final], he wasn’t dismissed early and provided decent starts… If you go through all the Test cricket of the last couple of years this was the most difficult pitch to bat on… everything was tailor-made for fast bowlers. And he looked very compact in that,’’ Salman Butt said on Cricket Baaz with Waheed Khan.
‘’Everybody knows about his reputation and performances, he’s an outright match-winner. I think he has enough experience to not make childish mistakes or say that he can’t fulfill his role because he’s habitual to something else. He’s that much experienced across the globe… I don’t think he’ll have any issue in adjusting,” he added.
With Shubman Gill likely to miss the start of the England Test series due to an internal injury, Salman Butt stated that such a thing definitely affects a team during an overseas tour but with the number of reserved that Team India has at its disposal, the former Pakistan captain believes that it wouldn’t be much of an issue for the Virat Kohli-led unit.
”Such an issue with a settled opening pair definitely affects the team. But their player pool is huge so I don’t think it will be a major worry for them. The kind of players they have, two teams are playing in two different countries, I don’t think it’s a big issue,” Salman Butt added.
