Skipper Rohit on a good deck

India skipper Rohit Sharma during a training session at the Melbourne Cricket Ground recently. Pic/Getty Images

These are challenging times for Rohit Sharma. His personal form has been anything but inspiring and his fellow batters are locked in a desperate battle with their own selves as much as the opposition bowling. But if Rohit is feeling the heat, there simply is no evidence.

Rohit seems cool

Two days before the start of the Boxing Day Test at the sprawling Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), Rohit was his jovial self during the press conference, refusing to rise to the bait on more than one occasion. He also didn't feel the urgent need to hit the nets and face a million balls, content to follow his own preparatory schedule on Tuesday afternoon in his team's only session on the unused practice pitches laid out by curator Matt Page.

Where his top-order colleagues sought to polish the rough edges against throwdowns, their own bowling mates and a few net bowlers supplied by Cricket Australia, Rohit spent a long time in discussions with head coach Gautam Gambhir and chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar once he belatedly made his way from the MCG outfield to the area housing the practice nets.

Strategies were being discussed, clearly; such is the lot of any skipper that while he must look after his own self, he also is responsible for all other players in the squad and India's is a jumbo squad reinforced by the arrival of Tanush Kotian, the off-spinning all-rounder from Mumbai who has been added to the side following the sudden retirement of R Ashwin.

When he did come on to bat, Rohit faced up exclusively to throwdowns from two of the three sidearm specialists, D Raghavindraa and Dayanand Garani, travelling with the team. The focus was on the fifth-stump line which has troubled Rohit and, to a greater extent, Virat Kohli, in this series. Rohit attempted to allow as many of those to sail by as possible, earning shouts of encouragement ‘Super, Rohit' when he refused to be sucked in by deliveries that sailed by not far away from the off-stump.

A return to the middle order where he batted exclusively for five years since his debut in November 2013 hasn't been memorable for the right reasons, but with KL Rahul striking up excellent rhythm as opener, Rohit will most likely bat in the middle-order for the two remaining Tests. Used in the last five years to setting the tempo at the top of the tree, he is just about coming to terms with the challenge of walking in when the tone has already been set.

While it is true that the early part of Rohit's international career was spent at No. 6 and thereabouts, to drop back down the order isn't as straightforward as it might appear, especially for someone of the mindset of Rohit who likes to get out there and get on with it.

His best chance?

It is expected that of all the grounds so far, the MCG will throw up the best batting surface of the lot. That doesn't mean a million runs to be had, but in a series where, Travis Head and Rahul excepted, batters have faced challenges galore, that could be just the spur Rohit needs to turn the corner. He might not show it openly, but India's skipper is surely hurting from the developments of the last two months. Course-correction, one suspects, isn't too far away.