Rohit and Shakib: A tale of contrasting World Cup fates

SAM MORSHEAD AT EDGBASTON: Shakib not playing in the 2019 semi-finals feels like a cricketing travesty. Rohit, meanwhile, has been turning his good fortune into gold all tournament

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Southampton, June 6. Rohit Sharma is surprised by a leaping delivery from Kagiso Rabada and gloves towards gully. Faf du Plessis charges in and throws himself at the ball but it spills out in from of him. The batsman is on one. He will go on to make 122.

The Oval, June 9. Sharma whips a Mitchell Starc half-volley off his pads towards the legside boundary. Nathan Coulter-Nile leaps to his right but can’t hold onto the chance. Sharma is on two, and will go on to make 57.

Edgbaston, June 30. Jofra Archer draws Sharma into a extravagant stroke outside off, a flail of the bat like a swordsman preparing for combat. Joe Root’s hands are too hard at second slip. Sharma is on four. He will go on to make 102.

The warning signs were there for Bangladesh. Give India’s vice-captain the slightest sniff of good fortune and he will make sure that, when you are grey and old and rocking back and forth by the fire, you’ll still be muttering to yourself about that day; that day you gave Rohit Sharma a second chance.

And so to July 2. Sharma, on nine, pulls towards the square leg boundary - the short square leg boundary which so irritated Virat Kohli on Sunday. But the shot is horribly mistimed and, instead of easing the ball into the crowd, Sharma loops up a catch to Tamim Iqbal, running around to his left.

^{Rohit Sharma made 104 against Bangladesh}

It is the simplest of chances in the deep, the sort of chance Tamim would have taken perhaps 10,000 times in practice; a gentle chance, unaffected by the wind and not left to hang indiscriminately in the air for so long that it begins to play tricks on the mind.

In another timeline, Tamim would hold on with ease, Sharma would turn for the pavilion and Bangladesh would chase down a modest target. 

But there is a different storyline for this World Cup, and it has been one of reprieve and retribution for Rohit Gurunath Sharma.

He added another 95 runs after Tamim’s error, compiled in characteristic fashion using a combination of the classic pull and cultured drive, sharing in the best opening stand of the tournament - 180 with KL Rahul - and taking India to a total which was always likely to be beyond their opponents.

One straight six off Mustafizur Rahman - head, shoulders, arms and hips swinging through the line of the ball together in one smooth movement, like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock - nearly left an unlucky Birmingham glazer with a particularly perilous Wednesday morning job on a media centre pane, and a simple single to leg took him to his fourth century of the tournament, equalling Kumar Sangakkara’s record. 

He now has five in World Cups in all - only one man, Sachin Tendulkar, has more. The Little Master made his from 45 innings, to Sharma's 15.

With a maximum of three knocks remaining in this competition, Sharma sits top of the runscoring charts with 544, just 129 runs shy of Tendulkar’s best of 673. 

Had those chances been held, he would have just 175. Instead, one more major contribution in India’s remaining games and he will surely end up as the tournament MVP.

***

Shakib Al Hasan stood and stared, half at the celebrating Indian fielders in front of him and half into the middle distance, his shoulders collapsing like Bangladesh’s World Cup hopes.

Maybe the ball had stuck in the pitch, maybe he had slightly misjudged his stroke - though it feels slightly blasphemous to suggest as much given the events of the past few weeks. Whatever, he had only managed to chip to Dinesh Karthik at cover. Thoughts of another famous victory would have to be put on hold, World Cup dreams placed into hibernation for another four years.

Shakib only has one more appearance left in him at the 2019 competition - a match against Pakistan which for Bangladesh has little meaning, and that feels like something of a cricketing travesty, akin to George Best never gracing a football World Cup finals, or Cris Carter a Superbowl.

Because there has been no more important a player to their team at this tournament than the 32-year-old. Quite frankly, there has been no better player at this tournament. Period.

Shakib’s 66 against India, ended only by that miscue off Hardik Pandya, was his sixth half-century in seven innings, his only ‘failure’ a 41 against Australia. He has made two hundreds.

^{Shakib Al Hasan and Bangladesh have been knocked out of the World Cup}

With the ball, he has taken 11 wickets and gone at less than five-and-a-half runs per over. He has the second best individual analysis of the competition, 5-29 against Afghanistan, and on that day was only the second man to claim a World Cup fifty and fifer in the same match.

Bangladesh are certainly no one-man band, but without Shakib they would be horribly out of tune. 

He has simultaneously been the team’s anchor, rudder and engine - inspiring at the crease and in the field - pushing this talented mixture of old campaigners and young cadets to challenge the pre-conceptions of the cricketing public.

More than any other player for any other team, when there has been a pivotal passage of play involving his country, Shakib has been front and centre - be that in the partnership with Mushfiqur Rahim which ripped the carpet from beneath South Africa, the display of controlled bowling which stifled New Zealand, that devastating spell against Afghanistan or, here, counter-punching runs against the most fearsome pace attack on the planet after bowling 10 overs against IPL juggernauts and being picked off only for peanuts.

Yet it has all added up to a group-stage exit, and thoughts of what might have been.

What if Bristol's rainfall had not been so biblical? What if the Kiwis could have been held off? What if that delivery hadn't stuck in the pitch? What if, what if, what if.

The scorers don't record what ifs, though. Just ask Rohit.

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