Rohit sends a warning to the bowlers with an un-Rohit knock

Close your eyes and think of any decent Rohit Sharma innings in T20s. You likely see pulled sixes, pick-up shots for sixes behind square on the leg side, slogs over deep midwicket, the odd slog-sweep. In Jaipur, as he brought up a third score of 50 or more in a season for the first time since 2020 despite a slow start to IPL 2025, he played none of those shots. You wondered if it was actually Rohit out in the middle.

Rohit hit no sixes in his knock of 53 off 36, the second-highest score of this IPL to not feature a six. This was only the third time in 89 T20 scores of 50 or more that Rohit didn't hit a single six. It wasn't just the kind of boundaries Rohit chose to hit but also where he tried to hit them. He scored 59.5% of his runs on the off side, the fifth-highest for his half-centuries since 2015. In his two other half-centuries this year, he scored 42.1% and 32.4% on the off side.

It was just a response to the conditions and what the bowling side was trying to do. Jaipur has offered a flat pitch but it hasn't had the kind of bounce available elsewhere. Rajasthan Royals (RR) bowled straight at the stumps, and almost invited him to play with a cross bat, the last shot you want to play in such conditions. With less bounce, you can't expect top edges to clear the short boundaries behind square. Anyway, the boundaries are a little bigger in Jaipur than elsewhere.

So Rohit completely shelved the hook or the slog as a low-percentage shot. When Jofra Archer went short with two men back for the hook, Rohit didn't take him on. He made room, and went into the off side.

Despite the big boundaries, the quick outfield provided value for going past the infield. So Rohit played this un-Rohit innings, shunning his favourite square-leg and fine-leg regions, and favouring cover and mid-off. In all, he scored 32 runs on the off side.

Rohit doesn't play a lot of T20 cricket these days; his last foray into the format featured his assaults on Australia and England in the T20 World Cup that India won last year. Despite his excellent form in ODIs and good returns the last time he played T20s, Rohit has managed to confound everybody with his lean returns in the IPL. He came into this edition with just one Player-of-the-Match award in the last five IPLs. Given the bias of these awards towards the batter, it was staggering how his IPL form had remained constantly underwhelming irrespective of how he did in international cricket and other formats.

The trend threatened to continue into the 2025 IPL as he failed to reach 20 in his first five matches. Then he turned it around with typical belligerence, scoring successive 70s. In Jaipur, he showed he could play a completely different game without hurting the strike rate too much. These can't be good signs for bowlers.