When Rohit Sharma's India takes on England in the upcoming 5th Test of the 2021 series, Virat Kohli's childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma believes that Kohli will unquestionably be thinking about his on-field rivalry with Joe Root.
The last time, when the two teams faced off, Team India was led by Kohli and had a 2-1 lead before the 5th Test got rescheduled due to concerns over the COVID-19 outbreak in the Indian camp in Manchester.
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After the South Africa Test series, the star batter resigned as captain of the national team, and in the rescheduled match against England in July, he will assume the role of a pure batter.
Prior to the rescheduled Test match against the runners-up of the first edition of the World Test Championship, it is interesting to note that Root also resigned as captain of England.
While Virat has been struggling to score runs, Root has been in the form of his life, having recently joined the elite list of batters to have scored more than 10000 runs in the longest format of the game.
Rajkumar Sharma praised the former Indian captain and former England captain as great players when discussing the rivalry between the two match-winners.
“Both are fantastic players. A healthy rivalry is always there at the back of the mind, that he has come close to you or has gone ahead of you, or you are close to the other person's record. You definitely think about it while sitting in the hotel or the dressing room. You forget this rivalry when you go across the boundary line, then you only wait for the next ball and you have to see how to score your runs. You don't get Joe Root or anyone else in your mind,” Sharma told India News.
During the bilateral series last year, Kohli scored 218 runs in the first four matches, which is less than half of what Root scored, 564.
Rajkumar expressed his opinion regarding the 34-year-old’s batting form, saying that Virat should concentrate on playing his natural game against England.
“But currently it is required for Virat to play his natural game and make a big score, which he is searching for for a long time. I have full hope that he will do that soon because it has been a long time. It has not been seen often in Virat's entire career that he has such a long lean patch, in terms of triple figures, he has definitely scored runs otherwise, but his conversion rate was exceptional earlier, once he used to reach 30-35 runs, everyone used to believe that he will score big, a hundred will definitely be scored but lately that has not happened,” Sharma stated.
(INDIA NEWS INPUTS)
