Ganesh Kendale
Rohit Sharma overcame his first-innings failure with a half-century on day three of the rain-hit first Test against New Zealand at the M Chinnaswamy, but it’s another incident involving the India captain that made bigger noise on social media.
In a funny video posted by a user on X, Rohit is seen going inside the ground from behind the sight screen, possibly losing the right way to enter the field of play while thinking about tactics in his mind.
Adding a bit more amusement to the incident, wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel, who was following Rohit, saw his skipper navigating through wires and chose to go back inside to move into the arena from the original entry.
Jurel replaced Rishabh Pant to keep wickets after the latter took a blow on his knee on day two and didn’t come out to do wicket-keeping duties on the third day. However, Pant was seen doing batting practice during a break later on Friday.
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Rohit, who is famous for his forgetful nature and scored only two runs in the first innings, scored 52 and added 72 runs for the opening wicket with Yashasvi Jaiswal (32) to lay a good foundation in India’s second innings on Saturday.
New Zealand (402 ) took a mammoth first-innings lead of 356 runs, thanks to the century by Rachin Ravindra (134) and half-centuries by Devon Conway (91) and Tim Southee *65) after bundling out India for 46 — their lowest total in a Test on home soil — on day two.
The first day of the match was washed out by rain.
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Finishing at 231 for 3 at stumps on Friday, India are now 125 runs behind the Kiwis after the top order tightened up to produce the runs.
India managed to throw a few punches back at the New Zealanders as Rohit, Virat Kohli and Sarfaraz Khan got among the runs for the hosts.
Besides Rohit’s half-century, Kohli (70) and Sarfaraz Khan (70 not out), who added 136 runs for the third wicket before Kohli fell to Glenn Phillips, also scored fifties.
While Kohli and Rohit will be kicking themselves to not convert their fifties into hundreds, their contribution has kept India in the contest.
