ICC CWC'19: Virat Kohli is happy to play second fiddle

MANCHESTER: For someone who churns out centuries as regular as clockwork, Virat Kohli’s ton-less run at the ongoing World Cup has been rather unusual. While Rohit Sharma has slammed five hundreds, the Indian captain hasn’t hit one in the last 10 innings. Kohli’s last triple-figure score came against Australia at Ranchi in March earlier this year.

Kohli, however, doesn’t have any qualms in playing second fiddle to Rohit. “It’s been a different kind of role that I’ve had to play in this World Cup and, as the captain of the team, I have been open to playing any kind of role that the team wants me to. According to me, Rohit is the top ODI player in the world now,” said Kohli who has scored 442 runs including five half-centuries in a row in the World Cup.

With Rohit setting up a strong foundation, Kohli finds himself controlling the middle-overs. “It’s great that Rohit is scoring so consistently which means that coming in the later half of the innings you have to play a different role which is controlling the middle overs and letting guys like Hardik (Pandya), Kedar (Jadhav), MS (Dhoni) in the past few games, and now Rishabh (Pant), come out and express themselves,” he added.

About India’s bowling, Kohli said: “It has been up there with the best, if not the best in the competition. I think the way we have bowled in low-scoring games, even coming back when guys have been hit, I think they have shown a lot of character.”