IRE v IND 2018: Virat Kohli wants the opposition to keep guessing India's batting line up

Kohli had made a few changes in India's batting order against Ireland.

Virat Kohli | GETTY

Indian skipper Virat Kohli gave a twist to the batting order against Ireland in the 1st T20I when he decided to bat MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina above him. As per Virat, it is important to give batting line some flexibility to keep the opponents confused.

Team India emerged as the winners as they were too good against the hosts with both bat and ball. Batting first, the Virat-led team piled up 208 in 20 overs. Rohit Sharma (97) and Shikhar Dhawan (74) shared an opening stand of 160 in 16 overs. 

The visitors picked up wickets at regular intervals to restrict Ireland on just 132/9. India won the match by 76 runs and kicked-off their UK tour on a happy note.

"The middle order is something we can experiment with in T20 games," said Kohli.

"I've got a good mindset of who's batting where so in the next few games, not just the Ireland ones but also against England, we will look to be flexible and use them as and when the situation requires them," he added.

Virat's main motive was to surprise the opposition with his move. "We will look to surprise the opposition and we've asked the batsmen to have that flexibility and they have responded very well."

The Indian captain had to justify his selection after leaving out to in-form batsmen KL Rahul and Dinesh Karthik for Manish Pandey. "We are using these two games (in Ireland) to play everyone, and I have already told them that the guys who didn't play will get an opportunity in the next game," said Kohli.

For India, Kuldeep Yadav picked up four wickets and was given the Man of the Match for his performance. 

The T20 captain of Ireland Gary Wilson is looking for a comeback in the second T20I. He said, "We can look forward to Friday because I do think we had enough positives out there to show that we can play against teams like these.

"We've obviously been beaten by 70-odd runs, a big margin in Twenty20 cricket. But if we can negate their spin in Kuldeep and Chahal, that would stand us in good stead."

 
 

By Sihyeu Singh - 28 Jun, 2018

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