Former Indian opener Aakash Chopra has questioned the team’s decision to rest skipper Rohit Sharma and talismanic batter Virat Kohli in the second ODI against the West Indies at Barbados on Thursday. In the absence of their stalwarts, India was skittled out for a below-par score of 181 runs after they were put into bat by WI skipper Shai Hope.
Barring opener Ishan Kishan, who scored a decent knock of 55 runs, none of the Indian batters could get going. In fact, Rohit Sharma had demoted himself to number seven in the opening ODI when the team was chasing 115 whereas Kohli didn’t even bat as the team promoted young batters.
India’s head coach Rahul Dravid claimed that it was their last chance to experiment and give chances to the youngsters in the second ODI before the Asia Cup, while defending the team’s call to rest their veteran batters.
India hasn’t looked solid with the bat in the first two ODIs and they will need to pull up their socks in the deciding game.
“You might be wondering why Rohit and Kohli weren’t there. Was it because the opposition team collapsed in the last match? The West Indies looked extremely ordinary while batting first, so India thought they wouldn’t play their main players, let’s experiment a little more. Could that have been the reason?,” Chopra said in a video shared on his YouTube channel.
With the ODI World Cup on the cards, Chopra doesn’t agree with the team’s decision to rest their main players ahead of the big event.
“If that was the reason, even if you could have got out in one match, that your team gets bowled out for 150, like you made 181 now. So should West Indies ask Shai Hope to rest as this Indian team is very weak? That doesn’t really cut it in my opinion because the World Cup is not too far,” Chopra added.
“The second point could be that players need rest, that a lot of cricket is happening and workload management is required. The truth is that there was one match in June (the WTC final), two matches in July that lasted seven days, and one ODI match. So you played eight days of cricket overall (in July).”
The third ODI between India and West Indies will be played at Trinidad on Tuesday.
