Picture Credit: BCCI
India skipper Rohit Sharma has backed former captain Virat Kohli to bounce back strongly after a disappointing performance in the recent series. Kohli hasn't scored a century since 2019 in any format. His last century was against Bangladesh in a day-night Test at the Eden Gardens.
In the recent ODI series against West Indies that took place in Motera Stadium, Ahmedabad, Kohli scored only 26 runs in three matches and got out for a duck in the third ODI on Friday.
Answering a question in the press conference, "Does Virat Kohli need confidence?" Rohit replied, "What are you talking about? (chuckles) I think not scoring 100 is a different thing but he played a series in South Africa and scored two half-centuries in three matches. I don't see anything wrong. And the team management is not at all worried about that."
"What we were worried about was, you know, how we will be challenged in the middle overs and I thought our middle overs batting in this series was really good," he added.
Everyone in the middle-order performed: Rohit
An 80-run knock by Shreyas Iyer and a collective effort from the entire team helped India defeat West Indies by 96 runs in the third and final ODI on Friday. Rohit was also vocal about the team's middle-order. He praised India's bench strength and said it's a good headache to have stiff competition in the batting line-up.
"We've got a lot of candidates for that number and it's a good headache to have and a good competition within themselves to come out and play and perform. If you see that's probably why I mentioned that middle order," said Rohit.
"Everyone in the middle-order, whenever they got an opportunity to bat, they performed and they got the runs as well. And they batted in difficult situations as well. In the last two games, we were 40-3 odd and then we had to build the innings. In both games, we managed to do that so it's a good sign moving forward," he added.
India won the ODI series 3-0 against the Windies. Both the teams will now be facing each other in the T20I series in Kolkata, starting from February 16.
