Indian white-ball captain, Rohit Sharma, has lent support to Virat Kohli and dismissed concerns over his ongoing struggles with the bat after the dashing batter was dismissed for a duck in the third and final ODI against the West Indies on Friday (February 11) in Ahmedabad.
While Team India whitewashed the West Indies in the three-match ODI series, Kohli again failed with the bat, scoring only 26 runs in his three outings in the home series, which has again raised questions over his form with the bat and his mindset following his removal as India captain.
However, Rohit laughed off concerns over Kohli’s form and insisted that there was nothing wrong with the former skipper, saying if he needed confidence, then nobody in the team was confident.
Rohit said at the post-match press conference: “Virat Kohli ko confidence ki zaroorat hai? Kya baat kar rahe ho yaar. Does Virat Kohli need more confidence? (laughs). If Kohli is in need of confidence, then who in the team is confident? I know he has not scored a hundred for long.”
He continued, “It is a different matter that he did not get a hundred, but in the series against South Africa, he hit two half-centuries in three games. I don't think there is anything wrong. He doesn't need any extra confidence. He is absolutely fine. The team management is not at all worried about his form.”
Talking about the positives from the 3-0 win over the West Indies, the skipper said: “The biggest positive was obviously our bowling unit. The bowling unit, if I have to differentiate, the fast bowlers and the spinners, they did a great job in this particular series.”
He added, “Along with Prasidh (Krishna), (Mohammed) Siraj was outstanding the way he bowled, with a lot of paces again, with the new ball and in the middle. Shardul (Thakur) played a couple of games, he bowled well in the middle and got one opportunity with the new ball, and Deepak (Chahar), was very impressed with his skills as well, the way he swung the ball.”
Hailing the Karnataka speedster Prasidh Krishna, the Indian skipper said: “Look, honestly I cannot tell you about Test cricket. But, certainly, he has impressed everyone with his bowling in this particular series. We were looking for someone like him to come out and bowl those overs in the middle and get us those breakthroughs, and we saw that clearly, the way he bowled in the last two games, with a lot of pace. We could see that he was getting something out of the pitch as well. From the team's perspective, it is a good sign that he was able to come out and do that. He is definitely a prospect for the future.”
He signed off by saying on the middle-order batting performances, “What we were worried about was the fact that, how we challenge in the middle overs, but our middle order batting in this series was very good. We batted according to the conditions and we had spoken about it for a long time that middle order does not get too many opportunities because the top three bat, but in this series, middle-order batted well.”
(With PTI Inputs)
