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Virat Kohli’s hat-trick of failures as an opener in the ongoing T20 World Cup has raised several questions. How about Rishabh Pant or Yashasvi Jaiswal opening the innings with Rohit Sharma? How about Kohli coming down the order to play the role of sheet anchor?
Sources have confirmed to CricBlogger that Pant won’t mind opening the innings. So, what’s the delay? To get the best out of the left-right combination, a Pant-Rohit opening combination won’t be a bad idea, won’t it?
According to former Indian cricketer Surinder Khanna, Pant isn’t an opener and so isn’t Kohli. “The opener of this team is Yashasvi Jaiswal and he should open the innings and Shivam Dube should be dropped,” Khanna said while adding that Kohli has the best numbers batting at No. 3 for India in T20.
“On a dicey wicket like the one we have seen in New York, we need a Kohli kind of a player who can stay on the crease and play a long innings,” Khanna suggested.
However, the popular opinion seems to go in favour of the in-from batter Pant, who has already shown the kind of form he is in. The Delhi lad has looked the most confident Indian batter till now in the tournament.
With India having the legacy of not changing the XI in the middle of big tournaments, this time again, not many would envisage a chop and change at a time when Rohit and his men haven’t lost a single game in the tournament while teams like New Zealand and Sri Lanka are struggling big time.
With the India team also trodding along to the Super 8 stage of the T20 World Cup, no one can deny the fact that Rohit and Virat Kohli are still in their best flow. At a time when India would need good opening starts, the stakeholders are worried if the partnership would be enough to last till the tournament gets over.
Whether the Indian team management makes cosmetic changes in the playing XI or not is a matter of conjecture, but the reality is that once Kohli is made to open the innings which he has been longing to do so for nearly four years, he won’t like to come down the order. It would perhaps hurt his ego. Who knows?
Who would bell the cat? Will Kohli demote himself on his own? Does Rohit have the courage to tell Virat to bat at No.3? At least, Pant is ready and the original plan of the India team was to have a left-right combo all the time at the crease, what happened to that then?
