Ishan Kishan, despite scoring the fastest double hundred in his last ODI, will have to wait for his next opportunity, as will Suryakumar Yadav, who is currently the best T20 batter in the world, according to Rohit Sharma, the captain of the Indian team, who made this point abundantly clear on Monday.
The next two weeks will see India play six One-Day Internationals (ODIs), three of which will be against Sri Lanka and three against New Zealand. The first game against Sri Lanka will take place here in Colombo on Tuesday.
Ishan broke a world record with his 131-ball 210 against Bangladesh in Chattogram last month, while ‘SKY’ has just achieved his third T20 International hundred in his 43rd innings. Ishan’s achievement shocked the cricketing world.
But Rohit made it quite apparent that Shubman Gill (who was named on record) and Shreyas Iyer (who dropped wide clues) will get a significant amount of playing time over the course of these six games.
Both of the openers have performed quite well. Rohit mentioned this before the first game, “But looking at how both openers have gone through, it’s fair that we give Gill a chance to have a strong run.”
In Gill’s favour, his exceptional consistency has worked to his advantage, resulting in 687 runs scored in 13 innings with an average of 57 or higher and a strike-rate of 99 or higher.
Ishan and Gill have both scored a significant number of runs in the recent games. Nothing that he has is going to be taken away from him by me (Ishan). He’s done an excellent job for us and scored a hundred and a half.
“And, I know what it takes to reach a double hundred, it is a tremendous achievement,” said Rohit, who is the only batsman to have three ODI double hundreds. Rohit is the only batter to have three double hundreds.
“But simply to be honest and fair to the guys who have done incredibly well in the past, we need to give those guys enough chances as well before we make that judgement,” said the coach. “Before we make that call.”
Ishan would have his fair share of opportunities, according to Rohit, who called the situation regrettable and noted that they have 15 one-day internationals and the Asia Cup scheduled before the World Cup in October and November.
“It’s a shame that we won’t be able to compete against Ishan. But considering how things have gone for us over the past eight to nine months and how the one-day internationals have played out for us, it’s fair to give Gill that run, and he’s done exceptionally well in that role. The ODIs have also gone through for us.
But Rohit gave his word that Ishan is still very much in the running for the job.
“Unfortunately, it looks like Ishan won’t be able to participate in this, which is a shame. However, this does not preclude the possibility of anything. As we still have a lot of games ahead of us, we are going to do our best to keep everyone involved in the action and see how things turn out for us.
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