India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said promoting Rohit Sharma to open the innings had been the making of the batsman after his latest century helped see the defending champions into the semi-finals of the World Cup.
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The 27-year-old’s superbly constructed 137 laid the platform for India’s 109-run quarter-final win over Bangladesh at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday.
It was the right-hander’s seventh hundred in 128 one-day international innings but his haul has seen Sharma become the only batsman to score two ODI double hundreds – including a world record 264 against Sri Lanka in November.
Dhoni said it had to be remembered that Sharma, who made his debut in 2007, batted in the middle-order for much of his career.
It was only in 2011 he was promoted as opener but it didn’t bear fruit as he scored 29 runs in three ODIs in South Africa. But Sharma capitilised on it fully when given a second chance two years later following Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement, and hasn’t looked back since.
“If I have to go back four years, it won’t be a realistic comparison, the reason being he was not really opening for us at that time,” Dhoni said of Sharma.
“We felt it was a bit of a waste of his talent if he was batting at No6 for us because, more often than not, he was not getting enough chances to bat, and our top order was quite fixed. That’s one of the reasons why if you see the first 40 games, you may think he has not done enough.
“It’s difficult espeically in a five-match series in India if your top oder is batting really well, at times you don’t get a chance to bat. You may get a chance in the last maybe couple of matches with 10 overs to go, and it all counts as chances.
“We thought it will be good to have him as an opener because he cuts and pulls well, and he’s a natural stroke-player. It helps if you have somebody like him in the top order, once he gets going he can play a long innings.”