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England express pacer Mark Wood picks two Indians among the most difficult batters he has faced in his career.
Mark Wood picks the most difficult batter he has faced.
(PC: AFP, PTI)
England pacer Mark Wood named Rohit Sharma as the toughest batter he has faced through different stages of his career. Wood said that he tried to trouble the Indian right-hander with short balls, but he would get ‘smoked’ and a feeling that the bat was ‘big’ and ‘just kept getting wider’.
Rohit scored 113 runs in nine ODIs against Wood, averaging 56.5, and getting out to him twice. In T20Is, Rohit struck at over 133 against the express pacer and got out once in three games. In Tests, Rohit was slightly superior, with 92 runs in the battle from four matches at an average of 46.
“In different stages of my career, I would say Rohit Sharma,” Wood said on The Overlap Cricket YouTube channel. “Difficult because against the short ball, you feel like you, for myself, I’ve got a chance of getting him out, but also if he’s on that day, he smokes it. So, he was difficult. I always felt like his bat was big, just kept getting wider!”
Wood gave three other names: Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Mitchell Marsh.
“Kohli, obviously. Unbelievable competitor, someone that I felt you have this weakness of fourth, fifth stump drag him in. But he never seemed to miss one when I bowl him there. So, that was difficult. Smith, because he’s so unorthodox, you think you can get him LBW, but he doesn’t miss it… And Marsh,” he added.
Wood will face Smith and Marsh at the end of the year during the 2025-26 Ashes. As Rohit and Kohli have retired from the other two formats, we can only see them against each other in the IPL or if they all make it to the 2027 World Cup in Southern Africa.
How do you bowl to Rishabh Pant?
David Lloyd, one of the members at the table, asked Wood about the Indian wicketkeeper and the pacer gave an insightful answer.
“I think you’ve got to hold your nerve,” Wood said. “That’s basically what I would say. I think you have to be sort of unpredictable but that plays into his hands, that he can just stand there and wait for anything difficult. But if you’re the same all the time, then he can, he’s got such a good eye, he sort of hits it where he wants. So, I think you’ve got to have a mixture of hold your nerve to maybe the old ball that’s a bit unpredictable, whether it’s a slower ball or you might change up with a really high bouncer or a fast yorker like something slightly different,” he added.
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