India captain Rohit Sharma walks off the field after losing his wicket in the fourth Test between Australia and India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. (AP Photo)
Former Australian spinner Kerry O’Keeffe said the age-old Australian tactic “to look to bring down the opposition captain” had worked once again, as the Baggy Greens humbled India 3-1.
In a blunt assessment of how the ploy works, recalling how Ajinkya Rahane and Jasprit Bumrah had thwarted them, O’Keeffe declared the Aussies succeeded in pulling down Sharma though. Other captain scalps he flaunted were of Pakistan, West Indies and New Zealand.
“They couldn’t get Ajinkya Rahane the last time and he won the series,” O’Keeffe told foxsports.com.au at the SCG on Sunday night. “But if you look at the captains they’ve brought down in recent times, Sharma. Tick. Shan Masood with Pakistan. It was three-nil. Kraigg Brathwaite, it was one-all, but they were on top of Kraigg. They went to New Zealand and brought down Tim Southee, winning two-nil,” O’Keeffe continued.
Bumrah had been too good for them, he accepted. “They couldn’t bring down Bumrah. He was too good. But then the baton was passed to Rohit Sharma and they brought him down straight away, to the extent that he withdrew from the final Test. So that’s a tactic they seem to want to do if they can, if they can break the skipper and make him anonymous, it empowers them,” he was quoted as saying by Fox Sports as Australia won Border-Gavaskar Trophy for the first time since 2014 in early November.
Fox Cricket wrote that O’Keeffe had mentioned during a chat at the MCG prior to the one-day clash against Pakistan, “that Australia would go hard at Sharma and Kohli in a bid to bring them down.” He also said Kohli had become Boland’s “bunny”. ‘And so it proved. Kohli started with a century in Perth, making the most of the benign conditions after Yashasvi Jaiswal had worn out the new ball and the Aussie bowlers. But from then on he floundered. The century aside, he made only 90 runs and had become Scott Boland’s “bunny”, unable to restrict himself from playing outside off stump, by the end of the series,” Fox wrote.
On Sharma, Fox wrote: ‘Sharma, meanwhile, arrived midway through the Perth Test as a doting dad once again. The smile on his face after he returned from a net session as India dominated in the middle of Optus Stadium was one of a man content with his place in the world. It did not last long. Sharma departs Australia out of the team after making 31 runs in three Tests at an average of 6.2. It is the lowest on record for an opposing skipper, and that includes bowling captains including West Indian Courtney Walsh.’
It will be a tale cacklingly told in Australian cricket for years, how Rohit Sharma joined Shan Masood, Kraigge Brathwaite and Tim Southee, as skippers Australia “brought down” by the end of the 2024 summer.
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