Indian captain Rohit Sharma said that the emerging players can be tried out in the shortest format of the game before moving to ODIs and Tests. India are not that much successful in T20s as compared to ODIs and Tests. Even they lost to Bangladesh as well.
“This is the format where we are trying a lot of players. The key players are not involved (in this series) so we are trying the younger players who are sitting on the fringe. That is one of the reasons, because in other formats we have our entire squad playing,” Rohit Sharma said
“This is the format where you can try (new players), and there is no harm in doing that. We have seen a lot of players who have emerged from this format, who have gone on to play ODI and Test formats,” Rohit shared. “We want our bench strength to be as strong as possible. This is probably the reason why you see so many new guys coming into the fray and playing.”
He, however, said that winning matches are the priority.
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“Having said that, it does not mean that we have to not win matches. We have to win, that is the first priority. But these guys will learn from it. That is how all of us want, including myself and the other guys who started playing T20 format first and went on to play ODI and Test cricket. I think that is how it happens and as I said we just want our bench strength to be very, very strong. This is the format (T20) to try all these guys who are emerging,” he added.
India captain Rohit Sharma defended the batting line-up where Shikhar Dhawan was seen struggling a bit. He also commented on Indian pacer Khaleel Ahmed, who was hit for four boundaries by Mushfiqur Rahim in the 19th over that changed the whole game.
“Our batting looks good. So I don’t think there’s any change we need to make in our batting. But we’ll analyze the pitch, and based on that we’ll see what we can do as a team,” Rohit told before the pre-match presentation. “The (pace-bowling) combination that we played in the last game, it was based on the pitch that was on offer in Delhi. We will see the pitch again today and we will think what we need to do in our bowling line-up.”
However, he is expecting Rajkot track will be better than the Kotla one.
“The pitch looks good. Rajkot has always been a good track to bat on and it does offer some assistance to the bowlers also. It will be a good pitch. I’m pretty sure it will be better than what you saw in Delhi,” he expressed.
“I cannot tell you strategy but what I can definitely tell you is that there will be changes in our approach. In the last match (in New Delhi), we played according to the pitch. We were playing as per the ways the pitch was reacting. But if the pitch here (at Rajkot) is good, our approach will be different as well in both bowling and batting (departments),” he concluded.
