Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], March 10 (ANI): India batting coach Vikram Rathour has said that he would not want to see opening batsman Rohit Sharma change his approach in the shortest format of the game.
India and England will be locking horns in a five-match T20I series, beginning Friday. All five T20Is will be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Rohit was in remarkable form for the hosts in the recently-concluded Test series and he finished as the leading run-getter for India in the series.
“Somebody like Rohit has a very set game-plan and he has been extremely successful following that game-plan. So I would not really want him to change that. He is somebody who takes his time initially, gets set first, and then goes scores big. That has worked well for us. That has worked well for him. So I absolutely find no reason to change that at this point,” ESPNcricinfo quoted Rathour as saying.
“Batting plans, again, in T20, yes, depending on what kind of the start of you have had, how many overs are left, so that is one format where you need to be very flexible with your batting plans or batting order. Anybody could be on at any point in time in the batting unit. That is the kind of mindset you need to have,” he added.
KL Rahul has donned the wicketkeeping gloves for India in the white-ball formats off late, but for the England series, Rishabh Pant has been included and most likely, he will start off in the T20I series.
“KL has done really well as a wicketkeeper-batsman. He has been a superb cricketer, he has batted really well, he has kept reasonably well. Now Rishabh [Pant] (is) back in form and doing well, let’s see how it goes. Once this situation comes, what the team management is looking to do, that’ll happen on the day of the game and how this series goes,” said Rathour.
When asked whether Pant and Hardik Pandya would be given license to go on the attack from ball one, Rathour said: “Yeah, that will depend. If both of them are playing and if you get a good start, so they are the guys who will go from ball one. Those are the guys who are capable of doing that. That’s the discussion we have been having: what the team requires at that point.”
“If your team requires you to score 12 an over you should be able to do that, and if your team requires you to get 6 runs an over and win the game, you should be able to do that as well. So you need to be able to adapt to both situations, and that is what a good game-plan is,” he added.
The upcoming five-match T20I series against England will help India get perfect practice before the T20 World Cup which is slated to be played in October-November this year in India.
Earlier, the Kohli-led side won the four-match Test series against England 3-1 to progress to the final of the World Test Championship. WTC final will be played between India and New Zealand from June 18-22 at the Ageas Bowl, Southampton.
India’s T20I squad: Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Yuzvendra Chahal, Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tewatia, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur. (ANI)