INDORE: Rohit Sharma 2.0, or Rohit Sharma the ODI opener, celebrated his 10th birthday on Monday. Exactly 10 years earlier, Rohit opened for the first time in ODIs and scored 83 against England in Mohali, completely transforming his white-ball career.
Till Jan 23, 2013, Rohit had struggled to bridge the divide between potential and performance. His ODI CV made for ordinary reading: two hundreds against Zimbabwe in one series and a few fifties here and there. That inconsistency saw him dropped from India’s 2011 ODI World Cup team. Eighteen months later, the then Indian captain MS Dhoni asked the Mumbaikar to take on the new ball in ODIs and Rohit found his true calling.