New Delhi, Dec 30 Former India wicketkeeper-batter Surinder Khanna has called for benching out of form senior batters Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli following the 184-run loss against Australia in the fourth Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground on Monday.
India captain Rohit, who missed the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series in Perth, has been struggling on the tour to score runs. In the five innings across three Tests, he has only accumulated 31 runs. Not only that, the Indian captain has shuffled his batting position from middle order to top order and has gained nothing out of it.
On the other hand, Kohli has failed to replicate his Perth century knock in the following five innings. He had scores of 7, 11, 3, 36 and 5 in the last three Tests of the tour. His struggles outside the off-stump have been a major worry for the former captain. Despite showing good technique in the first innings of the Boxing Day Test, Kohli faltered to convert the stable start to a big score before making the same mistake in the second essay.
"Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are totally out of form. When your main batters are out of form and you don't have enough runs, it is difficult to win a Test match. Australia played better cricket according to the conditions and played a good combination. Our young players are performing well, (Nitish Kumar) Reddy scored a century in his debut (tour) and (Yashasvi) Jaiswal is playing well," Khanna told IANS.
The veteran cricketer added that team management needs to show guts to talk to them to make way for other players.
"Since Rohit has returned, he has played in the middle order, and top order too but he is not scoring runs. This is a problem that Gambhir, selectors and Rohit himself are not addressing. You need the guts to tell the captain and Virat Kohli to sit down and have a one-to-one chat so somebody else can play. You expect your senior cricketers to score runs but they're totally out of form... You need to make some harsh decisions to get good results. The board will allow these players to announce their decision but the writing is on the wall," the former cricketer added.
Australia lead the five-Test series 2-1. The final Test of the series will be played at Sydney Cricket Ground from January 3.
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