India vice-captain Rohit Sharma will be seen in action as India takes on England in a five-match T20I series beginning March 12 onwards at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Motera, Ahmedabad.
Before the commencement of the series, Rohit Sharma answered a few questions in a virtual press-conference and a couple of major topics were Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant.
Pandya had his back surgery in October 2019, and made a comeback with the IPL last year but did not bowl. He won India games with his batting in the limited-overs series in Australia but he bowled only once across three ODIs and as many T20Is.
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He was also in the Test squad against England but didn’t play a game as the team management supervised his workload as a bowler and Rohit thinks Hardik is ready to understand what is expected of him in white-ball cricket.
"Of course he's been an integral part of the squad. He has been working on his bowling and batting, trying to sharpen that skillset. It's been a good month and a half that he's been with the team in order to get ready for this limited-over series," Rohit said ahead of the first T20 on Friday.
“He's done pretty much everything so it seems that time has come for him to get ready and start doing what he does. He's worked hard for his bowling and batting in these last few weeks. I hope he's ready to do what the team expects from him," Rohit added.
The second interesting question was asked about Rishabh Pant, who had lost his spot in the white-ball squad in early 2020 and has only made a comeback in this series. Talking about the same, Rohit sees the southpaw building on his recent success in the longest format.
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“He can go from strength to strength. There is no looking back for him. So far he has done exceptionally well from Australia to the home series against England recently, he's performed exceptionally well," he said.
“I don't see anything stopping unless you guys stop putting pressure on him. The good thing about his game right now is he is starting to understand the game situation, something that he ticks a box," Rohit said.
(PTI inputs)
