Indian team for the T20 World Cup will be picked on Friday and the biggest dilemma with the selectors will be to pick between Rohit Sharma and Manoj Tiwary. It looks that Yuvraj Singh will make a comeback into the Indian squad and that should stop the selectors from taking the easier route of picking both Rohit and Manoj.
Going by what happened in Sri Lanka, Tiwary should get the nod ahead of Rohit. Even ex-Indian captains like Sourav Ganguly and Dilip Vengsarkar have said recently that Rohit may have the talent but he should be dropped keeping in mind his poor show at the international level recently.
Indian team recently played a near perfect series against Sri Lanka where they won the five match series 4-1. The best thing for the Indian team was that almost all the players played well and there was no such disappointments accept for one- Rohit Sharma.
Rohit Sharma played in all the five matches and he got a chance to bat in all the innings. From five innings, he scored a total of 13 runs in the series. He looked out of sorts from the first one-dayer and it was surprising to see him in the starting eleven, game after every game. Maybe Indian captain MS Dhoni hoped that the batsman will start scoring runs to justify the faith shown in him by the team management.
What was most disappointing was to see how he was getting out. He kept on missing the straight balls and lost his wicket trying to play across the line. After the third ODI everyone insisted that Manoj Tiwary should replace Sharma. Tiwary did play in the fourth ODI but not in the place of Rohit but as a sixth batsman. India won the series with a match to go and there were talks that it was time that Ajinkya Rahane gets a chance in place of Rohit. Rahane got the chance but once again not in place of Rohit but as a replacement to injured Sehwag. So overall, Indian team management did whatever they could to keep Rohit Sharma in the team.
Now the series is over and Rohit Sharma has emerged as the biggest disappointment from both the teams in the series and the question that comes to mind is that is it time to replace Rohit Sharma with Manoj Tiwary on a permanent basis?
Tiwary performed well in both the matches that he played, in the first match he took four wickets and in the second match he scored 65 runs.
When these two players played together for the India A team against West Indies A, Tiwary averaged more than Rohit Sharma and displayed lot of guts. Tiwary has travelled with the team in almost all the series off-late, but amazingly he has played only eight matches.
It is true that Rohit is very good on the eye and possesses a lot of talent, but it’s of no use until and unless he starts delivering. Many international captains like Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne have said that Rohit is an exceptional batsman and he should be picked in the Test side, but going by the way he throws his wicket away, he is lucky to have not been dropped from the one-day team.
If Rohit Sharma is exceptional in the Indian Premier League, then Manoj Tiwary is no less. Rohit won the title with Deccan Chargers in the second season and Tiwary achieved that feat with Kolkata Knight Riders this year.
Rohit Sharrma is good on the field, but Tiwary is the better fielder among the two. So it is high time the Indian team management should give Tiwary a chance ahead of Rohit Sharma. We need players who are determined and have got the grit, especially keeping in mind the future of Indian cricket.
By Indian Sports News Network
