For Rohit Sharma, every game is like playing his first and last match at the same time

The most fascinating sportsman is the sportsman riding his sunset. He knows his sunniest days are a fragment of memory or recorded archives; that he is perennially living on borrowed time; that there is nothing left to prove, but yet there is something more to prove, that he still has the dexterity in his limbs, the passion in his eyes, the love in his heart and the desire in his mind to turn up on the grandest stage. Whenever he took the field in the three-match ODI series against Australia, these thoughts could have passed through Rohit Sharma’s mind.

Removed from captaincy, self-restricted to a lone format, the selectors undecided on his future, away from competitive cricket for 150 days, Rohit, at 38 and with 11,168 runs before boarding the flight to Australia was a certified 50-over