Ahead of the five-T20I series against England, India batting coach Vikram Rathour has said that he would not like to see opener Rohit Sharma making any change to his approach in the shortest format of the game.
India’s much-anticipated T20I series against England gets underway on Friday (March 12). All the games will be held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
See Also: T Natarajan’s participation under clouds for early part of the T20I series – Report
Rohit played a key role in India’s 3-1 Test series win over England. With 345 runs to his name, he finished the series as the leading run-getter for the hosts.
"Somebody like Rohit has a very set game-plan and he has been extremely successful following that game-plan. So I would not really want him to change that. He is somebody who takes his time initially, gets set first, and then goes scores big. That has worked well for us. That has worked well for him. So I absolutely find no reason to change that at this point," ESPNcricinfo quoted Rathour as saying.
"Batting plans, again, in T20, yes, depending on what kind of the start of you have had, how many overs are left, so that is one format where you need to be very flexible with your batting plans or batting order. Anybody could be on at any point in time in the batting unit. That is the kind of mindset you need to have," he added.
During the white-ball series in Australia, KL Rahul had donned the wicketkeeping gloves for India. But Rishabh Pant is part of the squad for the England T20I series and he is likely to start off in the opening game
"KL has done really well as a wicketkeeper-batsman. He has been a superb cricketer, he has batted really well, he has kept reasonably well. Now Rishabh [Pant] (is) back in form and doing well, let's see how it goes. Once this situation comes, what the team management is looking to do, that'll happen on the day of the game and how this series goes," said Rathour.
When enquired whether the duo of Pant and Hardik Pandya would be given license to attack from the outset, Rathour replied: "Yeah, that will depend. If both of them are playing and if you get a good start, so they are the guys who will go from ball one. Those are the guys who are capable of doing that. That's the discussion we have been having: what the team requires at that point."
"If your team requires you to score 12 an over you should be able to do that, and if your team requires you to get 6 runs an over and win the game, you should be able to do that as well. So you need to be able to adapt to both situations, and that is what a good game-plan is," he further remarked.
(With ANI inputs)
