After Ashwin, is the clock now ticking for old guard Rohit and Virat?

The morning after Ravichandran Ashwin’s surprise retirement on Wednesday, a bigger picture about Indian cricket is gradually emerging. Is this, then, the beginning of an era of transition, which new head coach Gautam Gambhir and chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar had apparently been tasked with?

There was some clue in Ashwin’s blunt take at the post-match press conference in Brisbane, where the senior off-spinner confirmed the news of his retirement. Referring to himself as the last few of the ‘OGs’ without any undue modesty, he said how their batch had lost some friends over the last few years (read Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane) before adding in the dressing room talk that everyone has to ‘leave’ some day.

No prizes for guessing then, that the clock is now ticking on skipper Rohit Sharma and master batter Virat Kohli. The form of the Big Two, despite Kohli’s welcome century at Perth, has been a headache for the team management.

Kohli in particular has been falling prey to the probing off-stump line of Starc-Cummins-Hazlewood with alarming regularity, with the aftermath of his last dismissal at the Gabba resulting in an unsavoury war of words between the legendary Sunil Gavaskar and Kohli's childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma.

Gavaskar, in his role as TV pundit, came down heavily on Kohli’s shot selection again, which had Sharma snapping back that the former great should sometimes offer a word of advice too. He could well have been having a dig at Rohit as Sharma told PTI: ‘’Sunil Gavaskar has been a great player and his suggestions are always welcomed, but I hope he advices others also about their batting. He (Kohli) has been performing well since 2008. It would be unfair to say that he is out of form on the basis of two innings. He has already scored a hundred in this series. How many players have got a hundred in the series?”

Point taken, but it would be living in denial to conclude that all is well with Kohli’s confidence. Since the start of the home Test series against Bangladesh, his first-innings scores have averaged just over nine runs across eight innings, while Rohit is in the same boat.

The elevation of K.L. Rahul to the opener’s role in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy gave Rohit a cushion of avoiding the new ball at number six, but the latter’s sequence of scores in the three innings that he has batted in so far are 3, 6 and 10.

Rohit’s justification after the draw in Brisbane really sounded hollow when he said: ‘’Yeah, I have not batted well. There is no harm in accepting that. But I know what’s in my mind. How I am preparing myself. All those boxes are very much ticked. It's just about spending as much time as possible [batting].’’

The fact is, if someone like Ashwin cannot be an automatic selection for the playing XI (apparently he wanted an assurance after sitting out two of the three Tests so far) despite being man of the series against Bangladesh at home barely two months ago, then the Gambhir-Agarkar combination should not hesitate to take a tough call on batters as well. Or are the batters more of a privileged class?

Now that the series is still level at 1-1 and the Indians are likely to find more congenial surfaces in Melbourne and Sydney, they should demand more accountability from the so-called new generation. Yashasvi Jaiswal has done precious little after that daddy 152 in Perth, Shubman Gill has got starts as no. 3 in Adelaide but failed to play the sheet anchor that Pujara was, while the same holds true for Rishabh Pant, who came of age in the 2020-21 tour Down Under.

There is still a technically compact Dhruv Jurel waiting in the wings, while Sarfaraz Khan has remained a passenger on the tour so far. If neither Rohit nor Kohli fail to turn the clock back in the next two Tests, then let’s brace for some nasty surprises in the five-Test series against England next year.