Former India player Saba Karim recently stated that T20 cricket has moved beyond the batsmanship of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. He made the remark after seeing ultra-aggressive innings from players like Suryakumar Yadav and Yashasvi Jaiswal, who are redefining Indian T20 batting.
Suryakumar Yadav has become widely recognised in the T20 format with to his brilliant innings at astounding strike rates over the last two years. Yashasvi Jaiswal and a few other young Indian batters are on a similar route and are doing well in the present IPL.
Veterans like Kohli and Rohit are struggling to keep up with them. Rohit has had a poor batting performance in IPL 2023, scoring only 191 runs with a strike rate of 124.83.
Meanwhile, Kohli has been a regular performer for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, scoring 420 runs in 11 games with a strike rate of 133.75. However, he has struggled to sustain a high strike rate against spinners in the middle overs for quite some time in the shortest format.
Simultaneously, players like Suyakumar Yadav are making a bigger impact by scoring runs with a strike rate of 186.13, meeting the demands of modern-day cricket.
Saba Karim expressed his thoughts on the topic in his most recent Tweet:
“When one sees Jaiswal and SKY bat, it is amply clear that T20 game has moved on from Rohit sharma and Virat Kohli!!”
They can still continue to trust that player”- Simon Doull feels MI should keep backing Rohit Sharma amidst his poor batting form
Simon Doull recently backed MI skipper Rohit Sharma in an interview with Cricbuzz. He believes the MI management should back their captain because their team is performing well even without his contributions with the bat.
He mentioned how CSK did the same thing with Shane Watson in 2018 and enjoyed the benefits when he produced a spectacular century, single-handedly winning them the match. Simon stated:
“When a team keeps winning without a player scoring runs, they can still continue to trust that player. This is what CSK did with Watson (in 2018). They carried him through the tournament and he repaid the faith in the final.
“Loved the way Ishan went about hitting in the powerplay. But it’s just not working for Rohit. Now what happens if Tilak Varma is fit? You can’t drop Nehal Wadhera now.”