'He Was Playing ODI Cricket Like it Was T20': Aakash Chopra on Rohit Sharma's Return to Shortest Format

Former cricketer Aakash Chopra feels that Rohit Sharma’s explosive form in the ODI World Cup 2023 is the key reason behind his return to India’s T20I side. The BCCI announced India’s T20I squad for a three-match series against Afghanistan as senior stars Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were recalled in the shortest format after about 14 months.

The duo last played in T20I way back in the 2022 T20 World Cup semifinal where India suffered a defeat to England and were knocked out of the tournament.

Meanwhile, Kohli and Rohit were the standout performers for India in the ODI World Cup 2023 and ended up as the top 2 leading run-getters in the tournament.

Chopra suggested that one of the reasons behind Rohit and Kohli’s absence was the selectors trying to look in a different direction.

“It is not that they were unavailable everywhere, they must have been available at times, but the selectors said no, because right now, we are going to look into a different direction,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.

The former cricketer further pointed out India’s underwhelming show in T20 World Cup 2022 where they India didn’t play with an aggressive approach with the bat and struggled in the tournament.

“One of the reasons considered for the defeat of the World Cup 2022, the poor performance in the tournament, was that everyone else was playing very aggressively. Pakistan and everyone else played aggressively, we used to play defensively. 36 runs in six overs was our template for match after match. We said we will try to make 100 runs in 10 overs, but we didn’t play that cricket,” Chopra further added.

Meanwhile, Chopra suggested that Kohli and Rohit’s sublime form in the ODI World Cup forced the selectors to look back and recall them in the T20I set-up.

“After this the ODI World Cup happens, where Rohit was in explosive form. He was playing ODI cricket like it was the T20 format. Virat Kohli became the player of the tournament,” Chopra concluded on the matter.

India T20I squad vs Afghanistan: Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar