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Kohli reasons behind Ashwin-Jadeja’s disappearance
By Aditya Pratap - Oct 21, 2017 3:21 pm
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India’s leading spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja are still missing from the limited-over circuit with some unknown reasons. Now, Indian skipper Virat Kohli tells the reason behind it and says team is looking to crack best bowling option before next World Cup.

“We need to find out best bowling combinations before the World Cup, we always had in mind to bring wrist spinners. We didn’t want to play both together but now it’s too tempting considering the way they have been playing. It’s also about rhythm and understanding the workload of the bowlers. Ashwin and Jadeja have been playing for the past 6-7 years. We also have to see how much we expose certain bowlers who play for us across formats,” said Kohli.

He also praised Rahane for grabbing the opportunity in ODIs whenever he gets any chance. He added “He has grabbed his opportunities as third opener, he has stood up and taken his chances. We can play only two openers and he understands the dynamics.”

The 28-year-old revealed the reason behind KL Rahul’s omission and said team wanted someone to play in the middle-over which led Dinesh Karthik to get One-Day call.

Skipper explained “We look to give chances to players who have the ability to perform at this level. At the same time, we have to strike a right balance between youth and experience. DK has come in for KL, because we didn’t want a situation that happened with Jinx(Rahane). He was forced to bat in the middle-order, KL has usually opened for the state team while Karthik bats regularly in the middle-order.”

“We don’t think of rankings, you can’t be frustrated about such stuff. We want to continue playing good cricket. These things don’t really matter, it’s all about winning, ratings don’t really matter, these are the things which might be rewarding when you look back. We have to focus on the processes and the results,” he concluded.

India will play ODI series opener against New Zealand tomorrow in Mumbai, where Kohli will receive his 200th ODI cap.