Robert Craddock examines captain Rohit Sharma’s India axing for fifth Test against Australia

Whether fair or not, it’s often how a leader exits which defines their tenure. ROBERT CRADDOCK examines the tough question of how India’s axed captain Rohit Sharma will be remembered.

It’s not fair but it’s true. Getting sensationally sacked in Sydney might well be the most famous thing that ever happens to Rohit Sharma.

He’s captained a World Cup winning team. He’s won six Indian Premier League titles. He played 67 Tests and has the highest ever score (264) in an ODI and is one of the format’s finest players.

Yet, like Australian Prime Ministers, American Presidents and other Test captains who faced dramatic exits, how you leave your post can become your historical hook even more than anything you actually did.

Think Gough Whitlam. Think The Dismissal. Think Joe Biden.

And, when it comes to captains, think Kim Hughes who did some great things for Australia yet is most remembered for his teary resignation after a Gabba Test loss.

It’s 50 years since England captain Mike Denness stood down before an SCG Test because of his own tragic form slump, still the event he is most remembered for.

That’s because captains being sacked mid-tour is so rare.

“Gough’’ Sharma may have a similar fate after his brutal, mysterious axing at the hands of mega-intense, straight-shooting coach Gautam Gambhir and the BCCI.

Rohit’s nickname is The Hitman but Gambhir has proved the man with the quickest trigger finger.

The sacking reportedly came after several senior players complained about Sharma’s lack of impact and the fact that Virat Kohli had been given the task of addressing the team before play.

India's Rohit Sharma leaves the field at the close of play on day four of the fourth cricket Test match between Australia and India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in Melbourne on December 29, 2024. (Photo by Martin KEEP / AFP) / — IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE —

Like an empire losing its king, this is a hugely indignant event.

As famously laid-back as he is, Sharma’s mood had darkened throughout the series.

He kicked the ground in anger in Melbourne as youngster Yashasvi Jaiswal grassed a series of catches, perhaps knowing his team had to at least draw that game for him to get out alive. That is not the Rohit many people knew as one of cricket’s coolest cats.

It was hard not to feel sorry for the lost leader as he wandered around Indian training on the eve of the match.

Rohit took no part in slips training because there was simply no point.

When Ghambir and new skipper Jasprit Bumrah went out to look at the match strip and discuss its foibles, he let them be for a while then joined in late, looking very much like the third wheel.

Then he went to the nets where he watched the top six from a distance with a slightly pained look of a man watching in on someone elses party.

He padded up late and faced a few throwdowns but mentally he was not there and once shouldered arms to a straight one. He looked lost probably because he was.

Bumrah looks up for the challenge of captaining India but India will still miss Rohit’s easy going charm. And his comic lightness.

When asked after the last Test what he though of Rishabh Pant’s horrendous shot, he replied “which one?’’

Sharma, raised by his grandparents because of his father’s low income, is a good man who keeps whatever ego he has well hidden.

But every cricketer is a slave to his numbers and his batting average this tour was the lowest for a touring captain, even below West Indies pace great and notorious batting bunny Courtney Walsh.

That is all that needs to be said.