India’s white-ball captain Rohit Sharma has asserted the team is not at all worried about Virat Kohli’s poor returns in the ongoing series against West Indies. The talismanic run-scorer has managed only 26 runs in the three ODIs, which is the first time in last seven years when Kohli has failed to score a fifty in an ODI series.
Talking about Kohli’s century drought, Rohit pointed to Kohli’s twin half-centuries in South Africa last month, saying he doesn’t need any confidence or help from outside. Rohit Sharma’s comments came after Kohli got out for a second-ball duck in the final ODI of the series.
Speaking at the post-match presentation ceremony, the 34-year-old captain said:
“Does Virat Kohli need confidence? What are you talking about? (chuckles) I think not scoring 100 is a different thing [but] he played a series in South Africa and scored two fifties in three matches. I don’t see anything wrong. And the team management is not at all worried. What we were worried about was, you know, how we will be challenged in the middle overs and I thought our middle overs batting in this series was really good.”
“It was a big positive for us” – Rohit Sharma on India’s middle-order
Meanwhile, India’s middle-order has stepped up to the task and led the batting after losing the top-order early. The likes of Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav and Deepak Hooda have made significant contributions in the middle-order.
Rohit Sharma highlighted that the middle order lightened the over-reliance on the top three – a major concern since the last few years.
“We batted well and according to the conditions. We’ve been talking about it for a long time that our middle-order doesn’t get too many chances to bat because the top-3 bats a lot. In this series, you saw how our middle-order batted and how well they read the situations. As a team, it was a big positive for us and we would like to carry that forward,” he concluded.