When India take on the West Indies in the first Twenty20 International (T20I) on Sunday, the hosts will be without their two most experienced men in the game – Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni – and it will be a great opportunity for stand-in-skipper Rohit Sharma and other players to step up.
While Kohli was rested for the three-match series, Dhoni was excluded after his paltry run with the willow in limited-overs cricket. Although the selectors didn’t want to cause any ruckus by using any negative word like ‘dropped,’ it was more or understood that not all is good in his T20I career.
Speaking at the pre-match press conference, Rohit spoke about Dhoni’s absence as he was bombarded with questions in regard to the former Indian skipper. “Dhoni has been such a massive player for us, over the years. His experience in the middle will be missed but again Rishabh (Pant) and Dinesh (Karthik) have great opportunity to come and perform and show what they are capable of as well. It gives them an opportunity to express themselves," Rohit told on the eve of the game.
Rohit also mentioned that the three-match T20I series against the West Indies also allows them to test the bench strength keeping in mind the 2019 World Cup which is scheduled to be played in England and Wales in May-July.
"We cannot go into the World Cup with limited resources. We need to have options. This gives you a great platform to try and test all these guys. It's very important because the amount of cricket we play, at the same time we got to see what our bench strength is.
The players we are talking of are possible replacements to come and fill in. We have to see the guys who are knocking the door and what they bring to the table. Not just the 15 players we got to see what is outside the 15 players we have. There are a lot of new faces in the team," Rohit added.
