Rohit Sharma wary of 'challenging conditions' ahead of WTC Final

The Dukes ball and a strong opposition pace attack will pose a stiff challenge for Rohit and his men at The Oval, but the skipper says he is up for the big task.

In an interaction with Harsha Bhogle on An Afternoon with Test Cricket Legends show alongside opposition skipper Pat Cummins, New Zealand batter Ross Taylor and England’s Ian Bell, Rohit laid down the marker on how he’d want to go about batting in England.

“I think England is pretty challenging conditions for the batters,” Rohit said.

“But as long as you're prepared to have a good grind you can have some success.”

Opening the batting is never an easy task in England and in this cycle of the World Test Championship, the country has seen the lowest batting average for openers.

In 11 matches in the cycle, openers average just 28.06 in England with only two hundreds coming from the top of the order.

Incidentally, both of those have come from Indians with KL Rahul making 129 at Lord’s in 2021 and Rohit himself making 127 at The Oval, where he’ll pad up again in a couple of days for the final.

While Rohit relishes the battle on hand, he pointed out the challenge of batting in England where you’re 'never in'.

“As a batter, you know, one thing I realised batting last year, I think a year before that, it was that you're never in," he said.

“The weather keeps changing a lot, so you've got to keep concentrating for longer periods of time. And that is the challenge of this format.

“You will get that intuition, when it is your time to take the bowlers on. And that is when you should be ready for it. And, more importantly, you need to be there."

While Rohit cited watching a lot of openers bat in England, he maintained that he wouldn’t try to emulate them, rather sticking to his own style of scoring runs.

“I've watched a lot of batters opening the batting here in these conditions and you know a lot of the guys who've had success I've seen them how they've gone about you know scoring those runs obviously I'm not gonna try and emulate them because they all have different styles and I have a different style, but it's nice to know the pattern of scoring runs here," Rohit added.

Rohit’s strengths might actually work out perfectly at The Oval like it did in 2021. While opening the batting in England in general has been tough, The Oval has the best numbers for openers in England in the last two years of the WTC cycle.

Rohit’s strengths square off the wicket could also work out well at this venue, and with the weather predictions promising to be good for the full stretch of the WTC final, the batters could potentially be in for a good Test match.

“We know that this is probably one of the best batting wickets as well you get value for your shots you know the square boundaries are quite quick,” Rohit said.

“So it's just about, you know, giving yourself the best chance of having success, which is, you know, to concentrate for longer periods of time. which is, you know, to concentrate for longer periods of time.”