Older Rohit Sharma switches back to steady-start approach that had helped him score double hundreds

Rohit Sharma did not push the Adelaide crowd to the edge of their seats, or make them chew their nails. He let their minds wander, they could grab a drink or snack. Those used to the recent vintage of heavy riffs of Rohit would call it a metaphor of struggle, or toil, the endgame lurking by, or worse a selfish scrape for existence.

But the 73 off 97 balls in Adelaide, the spine of India’s 264/9, was Rohit reacquainting with the methods that conceived his most prosperous phase, the daddy-hundred scoring period, than the recent iteration of frenetic destructiveness. Sometimes it’s not so much about reinventing as it is about reacquainting.

The tunes were reminiscent of the past, even though he failed to convert this to a hundred. Beaten first ball, a Mitchell Starc full ball that he drove