Hot and Cold

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Cricket

Sports

Rohit Sharma had an absolute blast playing in Indian subcontinent last year. He was scoring at an average of somewhere around 72, with 6 centuries and 5 half centuries in 21 innings. He is exhilarating to watch once he gets going. But till that time, it has always been a test of patience for Rohit, as to when to actually get going. He has that kind of lazy elegance, which seems to show that he has more time than others while playing any kind of bowling, but when he gets out, it looks as if he was rushed and didn't have the time to think the shot through or it is often a very soft dismissal, suggestive of being in two minds while playing the shot. The South African series, which has concluded, alluded to the same. He salvaged the tour with a hundred which was the least likely of outcomes, given the previous sting of performances. To say he is consistent, is obviously an understatement. He has increased his batting average, from near mid-thirties to a mid-forties average in an assiduous fashion, which requires the player to be averaging above 50 on a consistent basis. But what has been seen is that he definitely blows hot and cold. He has three double centuries in ODI. He has hit more sixes last year than anyone by a country mile. He has been striking at 100 runs per 100 balls with an average of above 50 in an unwavering manner. That is indicative of a player that has abundance of intelligence while going about his innings. This kind of batting has been observed when he has scored above a threshold of somewhere around 75. Conversion rate to a century is also increased when a player gets to 75. The basic thing which can realized is that he scores huge amounts in a bundle, which gives you the skyscrapers(huge scores) when you look at a graph, and the small cottages(low scores) which are more prevalent between those skyscrapers. There is definitely a point of argument which can be put forward, which shows that many players or almost every batsman, would have this kind of figure of skyscrapers and then cottages coming along in between in their score chart. The most essential thing which has to be seen is how long do those cottages run. Moreover, taking the variation of the set of his innings, can suggest to you that, the theory of scoring a gigantic amount of runs in a few innings and then fizzling out in the next few innings holds decent weight and is probably the case for Sharma. Further, if you want to see why Virat Kohli is called as consistent, it is because of his smaller variation on the set of his innings list. It can be seen that his skyscrapers are very close and the cottages are minuscule. This result is even more conspicuous in his current form, where he has been scoring centuries just for fun. Nonetheless, I am a definite fan of Rohit Sharma, but it is sometimes frustrating to see him wasting some of the opportunities to remove the caveats people put on his batting, while they helplessly praise him for the same.

- Shubham Anuraj, 3:50PM, 09 March, 2018