The camaraderie between India’s limited-over format openers, Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma is well-documented during their time on and off the field.
Both Rohit and Dhawan complement each other perfectly with their contrasting styles, facing the new ball.
Dhawan always has been a fluent stroke-maker through the off-side with the new ball, whereas Rohit is cautious up-front and takes his time settling down.
But there are only a few sights better to watch than both Rohit and Dhawan batting in tandem, making fielders chase leather.
Off the field, their families are even closer, with wives Ritika Sajdeh and Ayesha Mukherjee bonding with their kids.
Indian cricket has always been blessed with quality openers who take the game back to opposition with their approach.
The Dhawan-Rohit combination is often compared with the blockbuster opening pair of Sachin Tendulkar-Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag-Gautam Gambhir.
In a recent conversation, they recalled the time when Dhawan started singing loudly in the middle of the match, while placed at slips. The incident occurred during one of the games against Bangladesh in 2015.
“We were playing in Bangladesh in 2015, Shikhar was in the third slip, and I was in the first or second slip. I don’t know what happened to him. Suddenly he started singing very loudly,” Rohit said during an episode of Mayank Agarwal’s show ‘Open Nets with Mayank’.
According to Rohit, Dhawan’s sudden desire to sing perturbed Bangladesh’s opening batsman Tamim Iqbal, who was taking the strike, ready to face the bowler, already in his run-up.
“Don’t know who the bowler was, but he was already in his run-up and Tamim Iqbal who was taking the strike was left amazed,” he added.
“It might not sound as funny right now, but when it happened on the field we couldn’t control our laughter, it was really funny,” Sharma concluded.
