File photo of Virat Kohli (left) and Rohit Sharma.© AFP
Veteran players Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have made a return to India’s T20I squad after a gap of nearly 14 months. Rohit is the captain of the Indian side for the three-match T20I series against Afghanistan while Kohli will be joining the side after the first game. This will be India’s last T20I assignment ahead of the T20 World Cup 2024. What precedes the world event is the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 which will serve as the World Cup warm-up for the players.
Former India wicketkeeper-batter Deep Dasgupta has said the IPL should not be used to decide the future of the two players – Kohli and Rohit.
“It’s going to be important, but for someone like Virat and Rohit you can’t decide their future based on the IPL to a certain extent, and I am sure that Virat will score 500+ runs. He scores 500-600 runs, even if the season is too bad. It will be interesting to see Rohit this season because he is not leading Mumbai Indians, so it will be a different kind of role for Rohit,” Dasgupta told Star Sports as quoted by Sportskeeda.
“I feel that in spite of all the discussions, the squad for WC is 90-95 percent final and the playing 11 is 99 percent final. Another important thing is captaincy because this format is captaincy-based. It’s almost fixed that Rohit will be leading as the captain in the World Cup because he is leading, which is supposed to be the last schedule of the series,” he added.
The T20 World Cup 2024 is set to be jointly-hosted by UAE and West Indies. The tournament kicks off on June 1 with the final set to be played on June 29.
“Usually speaking, pitches in the West Indies are not batting friendly, I started off by saying that if we are expecting a 160-170 kind of game, so I think this is a better option because then you have the stability and experience of both these great guys. We have observed the change in the clarity and the approach after the 50 over World Cup,” added Dasgupta.
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