Rohit Sharma shows interest to train with Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy team ahead of next red-ball clash – India TV

India captain Rohit Sharma has reportedly expressed his interest to train with the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team ahead of their clash against Jammu and Kashmir. Rohit has been under the scanner for his poor performance in the Border-Gavaskar series where he accumulated only 31 runs in three Test matches before dropping himself for the fifth Test in Sydney. 

As per a report in PTI, the Indian veteran has shown his interest in featuring in the practice session with the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team and is likely to turn up for them in the training on Tuesday, January 14 at the MCA-BKC ground. 

“Rohit has expressed his interest in training with the Mumbai Ranji team. He has approached the head coach Omkar Salavi and made enquiries about when they are going to train for the next Ranji match, which is still 10 days away,” a Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) official told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

It is not clear whether he will turn up for Mumbai’s clash against J&K at the MCA-BKC ground, however, it is certain to feature in the training with Mumbai. Rohit is scheduled to feature at a promotional event in Mumbai around afternoon on Tuesday. 

Rohit was part of the BCCI review meeting that took place on Saturday after India’s 3-1 defeat to Australia in the Border-Gavaskar series alongside head coach Gautam Gambhir and BCCI’s new secretary Devajit Saikia. 

Rohit had a horrific series with the bat against Australia. He made only 31 runs across five innings Down Under with scores reading 3, 9, 10, 3, 6, for an average of 10.93.

He had missed the first test match due to the birth of his second child. He then made no change to the opening combination of Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul and batted in the middle-order in the second and third Test. He then dropped Rahul to No.3 and sent Shubman Gill out of the Playing XI for the fourth game to open in Melbourne. Rohit dropped himself for the fifth Test after failing in the fourth Test too.

After dropping himself, he stated that he has not retired. “I have not retired. I stood down, that is what I would say. Basically, the chat that I had with the coach and the selector was very simple. I am not able to score runs, there is no form, it is an important match and we need a player with form,” Rohit had said.

“As it is, in our batting, the form of the boys is not that good. So you cannot carry a lot of out of form players in the team. This simple thing was going on in my mind. I am not going anywhere,” he had added.