Suryakumar Yadav was at his marauding best on Sunday night. But it was the return of Rohit Sharma’s form with the willow that made the Mumbai Indians camp happiest at the Wankhede Stadium.
After all, Rohit had a quiet – to say the least – IPL 2025 campaign until the big game against Chennai Super Kings. In six innings, he had tallied only 82 runs and had very little impact despite being used as an Impact Player for most of the season.
Also read | Decoded but not done: The tactical resilience of T20’s mystery spinners
“Rohit doesn’t bat (so much) in the nets but there is a different preparation to how he goes about it,” Mahela Jayawardene, the MI head coach, said after Rohit was adjudged the Player of the Match for his unbeaten 74 off 45 balls.
On Monday, Rohit in a social media post thanked his old teammate and friend Abhishek Nayar, who recently parted ways after a short stint as the Indian team’s assistant coach. Sportstar understands that while Rohit preferred to avoid knocking in the team nets at the Wankhede Stadium, he was training under the watchful eyes of Nayar at the Mumbai Cricket Association’s facility at Bandra-Kurla Complex for a better part of the last month.
With runs having dried up with Rohit’s high-risk approach, Mahela stated that the MI coaching staff just let Rohit be himself.
“Once he comes off like that, you know that he is going to change the game, the momentum, and that’s going to filter down to the rest of the boys as well. Pretty happy how he never changes approach, that was there from day one even though he was failing. That was good for us that he was trying to play for the team and how we wanted to do it and we just back him to do that,” Jayawardene said.