India captain Rohit Sharma has defended out-of-form batter Virat Kohli and refuted the statement from legendary Kapil Dev, who had questioned the former captain’s spot in the Indian playing XI due to his ongoing poor form.

Virat Kohli's run of low scores continued on Sunday as he was dismissed for 11 in the second T20I, thus managing only 12 runs in his two innings. He looked good for his 11 runs, hitting a wonderful six and a boundary, before getting out while trying to hit over the top of in-field.

Kapil Dev had previously said that if a bowler of spinner R Ashwin's caliber could be left out of the Test side, so could Virat Kohli from T20Is. He was alluding to the fact that Ashwin did not feature in a single match in the five-match Test series against England, four matches of which were played in 2021 before the rescheduled fifth Test earlier this month.

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India lost the third T20I to England by 17 runs but won the three-match series 2-1, and during the post-match press conference, India captain Rohit Sharma talked about Kapil Dev’s statement on Kohli and defended the Indian batter.

"He (Kapil) is watching the game from outside and does not know what is happening inside. We have our thought process. We build our team, and behind this there is a lot of thinking. We back the boys and give them opportunities. So these things you do not get to know from outside. So whatever is happening outside is not important, but what is happening inside is more important for us," said the skipper during the post-match press conference, referring to Kapil's statement on Kohli.

"If you talk about form, then everyone goes through ups and downs. The player's quality does not get affected. So we should keep these things in our minds. When a player is doing well for so many years, then one or two bad series does not make him a bad player. We should not overlook his past performances. We, who are in the team, know the importance of the player. They (former players) have got all the right to talk about it, but it does not matter for us too much," he added.

India will next be seen in action in the three-match ODI series against England which begins on July 12 at the Oval in London.

(ANI inputs)