Out 20 times in the nets: Rohit Sharma recalls when he nearly lost an admirer

It seemed only a few months ago Dinesh Karthik was donning the purple and gold jersey of the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, but the wicket keeper-batsman has now turned into a commentator for Sky Sports. Karthik had recently interviewed Virat Kohli but this time it was Rohit Sharma’s turn to answer some questions. 

During the interview, Karthik mentioned how Dilip Vengsarkar has always been a big admirer of Rohit Sharma but he followed it up with an interesting incident where Rohit was dismissed a whopping 20 times in his first net session in front of Vengsarkar.

When asked how he actually felt at that time, Rohit replied, “Like I told you, that experience was not the greatest and I don’t want to remember it because I used to look up to all these guys in the Mumbai dressing room – Wasim Jaffer, Amol Muzumdar, Sairaj Bahutule, Vinod Kambli.”

“As a kid growing up, you are looking up to all these guys and entering the dressing room was not the easiest. It made me very nervous.”

Rohit confessed that it was a hard job facing the likes of Ajit Agarkar, Aavishkar Salvi and Swapnil Hazare.

Also Read: Mohammed Shami highlights captaincy difference between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma

When asked if he was trying to impress, he said “No, I was just trying to bat. I didn’t want to impress anyone because I was a rookie at that point. I just wanted to get the feeling of being with these stalwarts.”

Rohit also mentioned how Vinod Kambli was the only one who came to him after that embarrassing net session and comforted him with his kind words.

“Vinod Kambli was the one who came to me and made me really comfortable. He told me not to worry about all those guys standing behind the nets and all of them watching. He told me to just bat normally as they have heard about me. He said that they know that I play some really good shots and told me to just think about those good things.”

Karthik also asked Rohit about what advice he would give to budding Indian cricketers, to which the batting maestro replied, “Just be yourself and keep it as simple as possible.”

Rohit Sharma burst onto the international scene pretty early on in his career but was dropped later on due to a string of bad performances. After he started opening the batting with Shikhar Dhawan in the Champions Trophy in 2013, there was no looking for Hitman’s white ball career. 

His struggles in the longer format of the game are well known, especially in overseas conditions where the seamers get more swing and purchase. However, since a couple of years Rohit Sharma has improved his red ball batting immensely and has made the opening spot his own. 

He has amassed almost 3000 runs at an average in excess of 46 which is very impressive considering he had a poor start to his test career.