'Everybody thought this is it - he is the big deal'- Dinesh Karthik recalls Rohit Sharma's start in Test Cricket

In the year 2013, when Sachin Tendulkar played his last series, Rohit Sharma made his Test debut in the first match of the series. Rohit Sharma made his Test debut in Kolkata and hit an imperious 177, becoming the 14th Indian batter to score a century in his first Test. While Sachin's 74 in the second match was the talk of the town, the current Indian captain followed it up with another century - 111 not out in Mumbai, which marked the start of what appeared to be a wonderful Test career.

Surprisingly, Rohit's Test career did not take off from there. With Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, and Cheteshwar Pujara emerging as India's next renowned middle-order batters, Rohit played the odd Test but struggled to cement his place in the XI. Looking back on Rohit's promising start and how it unravelled, veteran India wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik explained how the star India batter dealt with disappointment in the first half of his Test career.

"I don't think there have been many who've had a start as successful as Rohit in Test cricket from an Indian point of view. In his first two matches, he got hundreds... and then everybody thought this is it - he is the big deal and the fact that Sachin is retiring from Test cricket, he is the one who is going to answer all those questions for us. But life and sport as it turns out is never exactly what you think it is and there were a lot of curve balls thrown at Rohit over the period of time," Karthik said in the docu-series Summer Stalemate on Cricbuzz.

"He has found answers to some and he has not found answers to some. Rohit always believed that he had something to contribute to Test cricket. In the conversations that I have had, he always felt that maybe certain things didn't go his way. Sometimes he played a reckless shot or two but he believed that he will come back. Interestingly, he didn't come back at the speed that he would and he resigned to the fact that maybe it's just going to be white-ball cricket for him now," he added.