OVER TO THE HITMAN

This Could Be Rohit Sharma's Last T20 WC. TOI Traces His Journey And What Makes The Man - The Only One Besides Shakib Al Hasan To Play In All 8 Editions Of The Event- Such An Irresistible Force In The Format

- Nitin Naik

April 2007. Fans were still trying to come to terms with the cricket team's early elimination from the ODI World Cup in West Indies.

Only a year before, the BCCI had reluctantly agreed to send a team to the T20 World Cup, to be held in South Africa in 2007, in exchange of getting the joint hosting rights for the 2011 ODI World Cup with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

For that they needed to put a team together and name 30 probables by June. They staged an event named Interstate T20 tournament to create a player pool. There was no TV coverage and entry to stadiums was free.

In the West Zone leg, Mumbai were playing against Gujarat at the Brabourne Stadium, and chasing 142, they lost Ajinkya Rahane first ball. In walked Rohit Sharma, still only 19, and smashed an unbeaten 101 off 45 balls with 13 fours and five sixes to become the first Indian to score a T20 century.

Next month, he was in the 30-man probables for South Africa and was picked for the white-ball tours of England and Ireland. Despite irregular chances early on, the man went on to become a white-ball colossus.