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T20 WC 2024 Last Dance: Final chance for Kohli, Rohit to give India an ICC Trophy after 13 years.
Bengaluru, It’s tough to find two cricketers who are so different from each other yet so closely intertwined by the same thread of fate as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
T20 WC 2024 Rohit’s initiation into top-flight cricket came at the idyllic Belfast in 2007 and Kohli’s a year later at the more conventional Dambulla. Another intriguing chapter of this journey toegther will potentially come to an end next month in the stunning Caribbean Isles.
The next T20 World Cup is in 2026, to be jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka, but Rohit would be touching 40 then and Kohli would be 38. The 50-over version is a further one year away.
India squad Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.
T20 WC 2024 It’s hard to see them playing in any of those, considering the increasingly strike-rate oriented nature of the game.So, both Rohit and Kohli will want to leave the stage with the winner’s medal around their neck next month. Should they achieve that, it would be their second each after the 2007 T20 World Cup and the 2011 50-over showpiece . And it will be a perfect send off for two players who have had an immeasurable impact on India’s white-ball fortunes in the last 17 years.
However, the Kohli-Rohit story is not one of bromance.
It’s based more on mutual respect and the awareness that they should not step into each other’s space.
Kohli has talked about the admiration he has had for Rohit since the very beginning of their careers.
“I was filled with curiosity about a player. People kept on saying – ‘This is one player who is rising rapidly’. I used to wonder that even though I am a young player, no one talks about me, then who is this player.
“But when he stepped out to bat, I was all quiet. It was amazing to watch him play. In fact, I haven’t seen a player time the ball better than him,” Kohli had said in ‘Breakfast With Champions’.
T20 WC 2024 Contrasting in nature, their batting has been high art for the masses to which they added a dash of modernity later. Of the two, Kohli is the more all-format batter, who has adapted more fluently with the changing face of the game.
He has scored in every corner of the cricketing world in a show of consistency that was rarely witnessed after the halcyon days of Sachin Tendulkar. While Rohit built his own edifices in white-ball formats, the Mumbai-man remained a reluctant visitor in Test cricket’s elite corridors for the better part of his career.
A move up to the opener’s role helped Rohit unshackle himself a bit in Tests in the later part of his career. But for now, Kohli and Rohit will have to lean on their vast experience in T20 cricket to fuel India’s run in the World Cup. Rohit will certainly open and if his approach in last year’s World Cup and in the just-concluded IPL can be taken as a sign, the skipper will continue his selfless, aggressive approach.
Herein, Rohit has an inherent advantage. His natural big-hitting abilities will help him pursue his batsmanship without many improvisations.
The current squad is eager to replicate that success and bring the trophy home once again.
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Written By sunnykadu