Ah, Class Act!

Grace, power and clarity-Rohit Sharma's qualities make him, to borrow a Mumbai cricket term, the quintessential valli' player

- SHARDA UGRA

If you had to pick your Rohit Sharma moment from the thousands in the ICC T20 World Cup final, what would it be? Hoisting the World Cup trophy over his head, shouting joyously? Celebrating with his great teammate Virat Kohli, a tricolour draped around their shoulders while holding the Cup? The goofy slow-mo march-up to the podium in step with Suryakumar Yadav? Tricolour in one arm, medal around his neck, daughter on his shoulders, waving? Or even eating a bit of sand off the Kensington Oval pitch later, saying, “I wanted to have a piece of it with me.”

Or was it something more visceral? In the first flush of victory, Rohit dropped to his knees, arms aloft before falling face forward on to the grass, hitting the ground over and over again. Absorbing what he has achieved privately for a few seconds before his mates come piling on to him.

In almost fifty years across 22 multi-format, limited-over World Cups, Rohit Gurunath Sharma is only the third Indian captain to win a cricket World Cup. Seventeen years in an India career which has been a constant tug of war between achievement and adversity, he is now alongside Kapil Dev and Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

It is the greatest triumph of Rohit’s game and personality and, flowing from them, his leadership. It is the culmination of a career where promise and disappointment have walked alongside brilliance and struggle. It is the emphatic coming of age of his twisting, turning cricketing life.