Rohit stays true to himself to keep the doubts away

When Mahela Jayawardene and Kieron Pollard sauntered out to the middle in the strategic first time out of Mumbai Indians' (MI) chase of 177 against Chennai Super Kings (CSK), their team was comfortably poised on 88 for 1 after nine overs. The asking rate was within their grasp, enough wickets were in hand, and they were on their way to a third win on the bounce, which reflected in the duo's body language and beaming smiles.

But the big grins were not only for the imminent win. It was partly because Rohit Sharma was among the runs. A batter in his 18th IPL season, averaging under 14 at the halfway stage, struggling to get past 20, and often falling to soft dismissals when the batters around him had started to do what their roles asked of them.

The noise around Rohit had started to get louder, and he acknowledged after the nine-wicket win that the lack of runs had made it "very easy to start doubting yourself, start getting worried, and start doing different things". Desperate times call for desperate measures, as the cliché goes, and Rohit could have taken that route. But he didn't.

He chose to stick with his approach of trying to give his team rapid starts, and not letting their run rate suffer by taking his time to get out of the rut, whether batting first or chasing below-par totals against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and CSK. And he had the backing of his support staff because they took confidence from his approach and strike rate of over 143 before Sunday, even if he was not getting the big scores.

As much as Rohit would have rued his mode of dismissal against SRH - he middled a full toss to cover - he did score 26 off 15 balls with three sixes (and no fours). He was not abandoning the high-risk approach.

Against CSK, too, he started his boundary hitting with towering sixes off Jamie Overton and Khaleel Ahmed, the second of which was not as easy to middle as the first. Rohit would have known he didn't have a great match-up against Khaleel in the IPL: 28 runs (without a six) off 43 balls before Sunday with three dismissals. He still chose to flick the left-armer's offcutter on the stumps and send it flying behind square, before getting a half-volley and some room later in the over for two fours that took MI's scoring rate over 10. By the time Rohit got to his half-century off 33 balls, he had smashed two more sixes, while having just those two fours to his name.

"For me, it was important that I keep doing what I am doing, which is practise well, hit the ball well, which is what I've been trying to do," Rohit said after being named the Player of the Match. "And when you back yourself and you're clear in your mind, things like this can happen. I know it's been a little while but, like I said, if you start doubting yourself, you're only going to put pressure on yourself and actually the experience of being here for such a long time helps."

Jayawardene and Pollard, meanwhile, knew they didn't need to have long conversations with Rohit or make him sweat it out in the nets. Rohit didn't even bat in training on Saturday or the day before their SRH fixture. "You leave them be," Jayawardene said after Sunday's game about handling such situations with experienced players. And when you must talk, you only stick to the "positive conversations".

"[You] say that let's do the match-ups and then see how he gets going and keep the positive intent," Jayawardene said in the press conference after the game. "He knew what he needs to do and [it's] just a tiny thing that he gets going and then gets through the first three-four overs… even after starts he had a couple of shots which probably just mistimed a little bit. But that's how the game goes, so you need to be understanding, and we have played enough cricket to know that as well.

"Once he comes off like that, you know that he's going to change the game, the momentum, and that's going to filter down to the rest of the boys as well. So pretty happy how he never changes [his] approach, that was there from day one even though he was failing. So that was good for us that he was trying to play for the team and how we wanted to do it and we just back him to do that.

"He's been playing this tempo for a while and that's something that he understands himself, but at the same time, he will understand the game better in situational awareness as well."

That awareness, which Rohit has gathered in all the years of T20 cricket, helps him choose the moments and bowlers to target, and makes sure he doesn't get carried away when he finally get going. For example, when CSK gave the ball to R Ashwin after three overs, Rohit, on 22 off 10 then, chose to play out the accurate deliveries for nothing more than singles, but MI still scored 62 in the powerplay without losing a wicket.

"Those are experienced players making those good decisions out there," Jayawardene said of Rohit's approach against Ashwin. "So he'll still play with that tempo and we'll be encouraging him to do that. He's a damn good player, so we wanted to take control of that and then he's got a couple of other guys who's going to follow him, who will bat around him as well."

Soon after joining Rohit in the seventh over, Suryakumar Yadav started taking on the spinners by manufacturing room and sweeping them away to the boundary. The packed Wankhede crowd had already seen two local boys - Ayush Mhatre and Shivam Dube - belt out six sixes between them for the opposition earlier, and the way Rohit and Suryakumar hit 11 more sixes gave the crowd their money's worth.

Rohit will agree his unbeaten 76 off 45 was hardly as attractive as one of his top T20 knocks, but with runs under his belt again and a healthy strike rate of nearly 155 this IPL, he and the MI think tank have the confidence and belief that all cylinders of their batting engine are now firing, and they will be ready to switch gears as the playoffs race heats up.