Last night on January 13, the T20 squad for the upcoming New Zealand Series was announced by the BCCI and what’s the most surprising was the omission of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.
It was noted that both these senior players were on break from the T20 series against Sri Lanka but what made their exit from the New Zealand T20I series? Fans are labeling it as both players are now nowhere being considered for the T20I and the BCCI wants to build the team around the young blood under the captaincy of Hardik Pandya.
From Ireland to Sri Lanka and now for the New Zealand series, Hardik Pandya has been the captain of the side and he has proved his caliber with the win in the series mentioned above.
A few days back the Indian head coach Rahul Dravid came with a statement where he claimed that the BCCI was building around the youngsters. However, Rohit and Virat Kohli will play in the IPL and it will be interesting to see how things go for them from there on.
Then Rahul Dravid had said, “For us, obviously, from the last semi-final (in the T20 World Cup) that we played against England, only 3-4 boys are playing in the XI (against Sri Lanka). We are slightly in a different stage of looking at the next cycle of T20, so ours is a slightly younger team and for us to play against the quality of Sri Lanka is a fantastic experience. The good thing is that a lot of focus is on the ODI World Cup and World Test Championship, so the T20s give us the opportunity to try out these guys.”
Why Too Many Changes In The T20 Team?
With the T20 World Cup ahead next year, BCCI wants to leave no stone unturned to win the trophy. To date, India has won only one T20 World Cup, that too in 2007 under the captaincy of former Indian captain MS Dhoni. The performance of team India in T20Is has been very average in recent years and the board is looking to get some fruitful results in the next edition of the T20 World Cup jointly hosted by the USA and Caribbean Island.
Coming on to Virat and Rohit, the RCB player is still the highest run-getter in the history of Men’s T20I cricket. On the other hand, Rohit Sharma also has some solid records in the shortest format in Indian Jersey.
Kohli played his last T20I against England on 10 November 2022 and since then he has been out from that particular squad. To date, he has played 115 T20I games in which he has scored 4008 runs with an impressive average of 52.74. During this, the batter has smashed 37 fifties and one hundred which came against Afghanistan in the Asia Cup 2022.
Talking about Rohit Sharma, the batter has played 148 T20I matches for India in which he has 3853 runs in his kitty. He has an average of 30.82 with 29 fifties and 4 hundred to his name.
Rohit Sharma played his last T20I match for India vs England on November 10, 2022, the same match Kohli played his last.
