Ravi Shastri Explains How He Would Have Approached Rohit Sharma's Retirement: 'That's Not The Stage'

Consecutive retirements of two Indian stalwarts have put the Indian Cricket Team in a spot of bother ahead of the England tour. Rohit Sharma was the first to announce his retirement from Test cricket, and Virat Kohli followed suit in a space of six days.

Rohit's form in the red ball format had attracted severe criticism. The former Indian Test skipper has now moved away from the long-format to concentrate only on the limited-overs format. Rohit's last test series happened to be on Australian soil, and he fared very poorly, accumulating just 31 runs in three Test matches at an average of 6.20 across five innings. He missed the first Test due to the birth of his second child, while in the wake of his underwhelming form, he chose to sit out in the last match in Sydney.

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Ravi Shastri Opens Up On Rohit Sharma's Retirement

Now, Ravi Shastri has revealed that if he were the coach, he would have wanted Rohit to play in the last Test in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. On the ICC Review, he told Sanjana Ganesan, “I saw Rohit a lot at the toss. At the toss, you don't get enough time to speak. Though I did put my hand on his shoulder in one of the games.

“I think it was in Mumbai and told him, if I was coach you would have never not played that last Test match. You would have played that last Test match because the series wasn't over.

“And I'm not someone who threw in the towel with the scoreline 2-1. If your mindset is you feel you are… that's not the stage, you leave a team.”

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Rohit Sharma's Poor Form Was Quite Evident

Rohit ended up scoring 4301 runs in 67 Test matches at an average of 40.57. He scored a century on his debut against the West Indians and went on to add 12 hundreds and 18 half-centuries. 

But his recent form was not up to the mark. The 38-year-old managed to post only one 50+ score in the last eight matches, which also included home Test matches against Bangladesh and New Zealand. Prior to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the Rohit-led Indian team was inflicted a 3-0 whitewash at the hands of New Zealand and they subsequently crashed out of the World Test Championship.