Manjrekar: ‘Rohit Sharma is losing his grip on things’

Sanjay Manjrekar believes Rohit Sharma is in a challenging phase of his career — one where his natural talent alone might not be enough. After scoring just 8 against Gujarat Titans (GT) in Mumbai Indians’ (MI) IPL 2025 clash on Saturday, following a four-ball duck against Chennai Super Kings (CSK), questions around his form have resurfaced. “Rohit Sharma is clearly going through a phase,” Manjrekar said on JioStar. “He's not the Rohit Sharma of three or four years ago. He’s at a point in his career where he has to push himself every morning — train hard and be at his best — because things are slipping away. He’s still relying on his natural talent and instincts.”

Rohit's struggles haven’t been limited to the IPL. He endured a tough stretch in international cricket too, beginning with the Test series against Bangladesh in September 2024, where he averaged just 10.93 and managed only one fifty — a top score of 52. Even during India’s Champions Trophy triumph, he couldn’t convert starts into big scores, with his 76 in the final against New Zealand being the only notable knock.

Meanwhile, MI have lost both their games this season. After going down to CSK by four wickets, they suffered a 36-run defeat against GT on a sluggish Ahmedabad surface while chasing 197. This season, Rohit has a new opening partner in Ryan Rickelton, the South African batter, who has also failed to make an impact. While Manjrekar believes Rickelton needs time to adjust, he’s not entirely convinced by the rest of MI’s batting line-up. “Ryan Rickelton, being a South African, will take time to adjust to Indian pitches,” he said. “Very few South African batters, barring AB de Villiers and Heinrich Klaasen, have truly flourished on Indian pitches. So we'll have to give him time. Apart from that, Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav, along with Robin Minz and some of the other players, form the batting line-up. However, to me, it still looks a little unconvincing.”

He added that many of MI's batters seem to rely on tracks with good pace and bounce. “There were some shots that were easy to hit on that wicket, there were some shots that were difficult, so we were making sure that we make sure that they were hitting difficult shots on that wicket. Which we thought were difficult when we were batting,” Gill said in the press conference. According to Manjrekar, if the chase had been at Wankhede, where the ball comes on better, MI might have gotten much closer.

Analyzing MI’s approach against GT, Manjrekar noted that the early collapse hurt them. “Mumbai Indians didn't look in the race when they lost two wickets for 35. In comparison, Gujarat Titans had around 129 runs for their first two wickets. After that, it seemed like Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav were trying to build a partnership. The challenge with building a partnership in a chase of over 190 is that the required run rate starts to suffer, and that's exactly what happened. In the end, you have to say that Gujarat Titans batted better — I thought they got maybe 15 to 20 runs over par.”

He also pointed out that the absence of dew added to MI’s difficulties. Still, he cautioned against reading too much into the early setbacks. “Despite all that, two losses are quite typical for Mumbai Indians. They still seem to be on the right track to go on and win the title — as they have done in the past, most memorably in 2014.”

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