‘Nathan Lyon is not that good…’: Rohit Sharma shares interesting incident from India-Australia Test match

India’s ODI captain Rohit Sharma shared an interesting behind-the-scenes moment from Indian cricket. During the launch of ‘The Diary of a Cricketer’s Wife’, authored by Cheteshwar Pujara’s wife, Puja, Rohit recounted how he encouraged Pujara via a message from the dressing room to target Australian spinner Nathan Lyon and hit him for an unusual six. Although Pujara has scored more than 7,000 runs in Tests, he is not widely recognized for his hitting ability, as his Test strike rate is below 45.

Rohit recounted the events from the third Test match between India and Australia held in Indore in 2023. Pujara and Axar Patel were batting steadily but slowly, while Nathan Lyon bowled the majority of the overs. Noticing that Lyon had positioned mid-on up, Rohit quickly relayed a message to Pujara through Ishan Kishan.

“We wanted to get Nathan Lyon off the track a little bit. We wanted to get some runs quickly. We probably were looking at declaring or something. We thought, ‘no, something needs to change now, maybe, a message would do good’. The entire time, he was bowling with mid-on up.” Rohit narrated

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I thought, he’s not that good of a bowler to keep mid-on up. I knew it was a challenge, the pitch was turning square but we needed to get runs quickly. So I had to send Ishan,” Rohit added.

Rohit’s idea did worked as Pujara hit a towering six to Nathon Lyon on that region.

“It’s one thing that we send messages. Sometimes what batters do is whenever someone comes out with a message, we know exactly why he’s there. So I would stop him there itself!” Rohit concluded.