If I were Rohit Sharma..

Once upon a time there was an Indian cricketer called Devang Gandhi. Don't worry if that name doesn't strike a chord in your brain, because it means you are normal and, in any case, brains don't have chords. However, if you are one of the 9 people who still remember him and you are not his family, then I'll strongly recommend donating your brain for research (I'm contemplating on doing the same).

Devang Gandhi made his test debut for India in 1999; scored 75 in his second innings, and was the top scorer for the team in his next innings, with a score of 88.
This is when his life took a really interesting and unexpected turn ..... Ian Chappell made a prediction about him. Chappell predicted that India had finally solved their opening problems (remember that those days Sidhu was considered the best Indian opener since Gavaskar; and Sehwag was a name yet unheard of). Chappell, on the account of those two innings from Devang Gandhi, was convinced that he had the makings of a successful opening batsman and could go on to play for India for a long long time. Gandhi scored 6, 4, 0 in his next three innings and looked so out of sorts against Australia that he was dropped from the team. He never played for India again. Last I heard of him, he was also dropped from his domestic team (Bengal), announced his retirement from first class cricket and was busy giving tips to youngsters on how to become a successful test opener.

A similar inflection point came in JP Duminy's career in 2009. Chappell, wrote a long piece, on how Duminy is a great in making. Read that article and count the number of times he compares Duminy to Tendulkar and Ponting. Well, Duminy, till then had a decent test career; 10 innings 389 runs and average close to 50. In the 10 innings of post-Chappell-prediction-era he has scored 129 runs and his career average has dropped below 30 (check this out). His vulnerability against spin is now well documented and his stock has fallen so much that he was ignored for the first half of the IPL this year (admittedly, initially few matches were due to injury), despite top scoring for his team in last year's edition. There are question marks about his continued selection in the SA team now and one wonders if his career is going in the same direction as Devang Gandhi's (On a serious note, I hope not. He is a fantastic player to watch and I hope he rediscovers his form).

This is the reason why I would be really worried, if I were Rohit Sharma. Chappell has been calling Sharma a great player in making since that last one day tournament India played in Australia.  Chappell, during that series, mentioned on air that Rohit Sharma was a strong contender for carrying India's middle order in test cricket and take over the mantle from Tendulkar. One wonders if this is what is preventing Sharma for getting selected in the test team. But Sharma was still scraping by, since Chappell hadn't put that prediction down in writing. All of that changed this week, when Chappell wrote this piece.

He says:
"And here was Rohit, a young Indian batsman of abundant skill, displaying the complementary nerve that is required to succeed at the highest level. The question is not whether Rohit has the skill to make it as a batsman in all forms of the game but whether the selectors will ignore his talents for so long that his best years will be past when he's finally chosen."

So, what "best years' Chappell is talking about? Sharma has player 42 ODIs for India with an average of 25; an average that's closer to Agarkar's than Tendulkar's; and a strike rate of 72; more Dravidian than Dhoni-esque. The question we need to ask is why he is still part of India's ODI team and why he is picked for India's T20 world-cup squad, over Virat Kohli (but, then we are forgetting that it is Srikanth who selects the team these days). In any case, Rohit Sharma shouldn't worry too much about his position in the current team. What he should be really concerned about is, now what happens to his career, now that Chappell had made the prediction and, this time, in writing. Out of all the things that can damage a batsman's career, Chappell's prediction is the worst; way ahead of a Shohaib Akhtar's beamer, Darrel Harper's finger or even the cheerleaders.