Even the supremely fit Virat Kohli can get exhausted and feel the rigours of calendar-congestion. A day before the start of the series, in Kolkata, he hinted in as<\/p>\n
many words that he required rest. \u201cI\u2019m not a robot, you can slice my skin and check I bleed. I too need rest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Heeding to Kohli\u2019s request, the selectors have finally decided to rest him for the 50-over installment of this series, thereby making his deputy, Rohit Sharma,<\/p>\n
the skipper for the three-match ODI series beginning on December 10.<\/p>\n
It was a timely break ahead of a long sequence of series overseas, which begins in South Africa. Whereas several other players had time to cool off, for several<\/p>\n
reasons ranging from injury to bad form and over-specific cricket, Kohli has been playing virtually non stop, missing just one of his last 60 Tests India has<\/p>\n
played. The workload since the West Indies tour last year has been staggering \u2014 in the span of nearly one-and-a-half years, he has played an astounding 65<\/p>\n
international games across formats, which included 21 Tests, 38 ODIS and half-a-dozen T20Is. Even if you don\u2019t consider the travel days, the IPL season, and<\/p>\n
the rigours of captaincy, he has played an astonishing amount of cricket, all the while sustaining prolific consistency as well. Since the start of the Caribbean<\/p>\n
tour, no one has played as many games or faced as many balls (5088) as Kohli. And we are not even trying to attempt a rough estimate of the runs he ran or<\/p>\n
miles he traversed in the process.<\/p>\n
The frenetic itinerary had him dissed on several counts. Between the two Sri Lanka series were clubbed two context-less limited-over series against New<\/p>\n
Zealand and Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs usual cramped for time, which I think we needed to assess in future as well because we very easily assess the team when we go abroad but we don\u2019t look<\/p>\n
at how many days we have got to prepare before we go to a particular place to play. And everyone starts judging players when results come after Test<\/p>\n
matches,\u201d he said before the second Test, forcing the team management to suddenly ask the curators to make green-tops out of dust-bowls.<\/p>\n
Most others of the team\u2019s nucleus had some form of rest or the other. Murali Vijay had a lengthy injury layoff. Shikhar Dhawan was out of the team for a while;<\/p>\n
Ishant Sharma\u2019s previous international match was against Australia in Ranchi last March and played only six IPL games. KL Rahul, Umesh Yadav and Ajinkya<\/p>\n
Rahane flew in and out of the limited-overs scheme. Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin, two others who were clearly over-worked players, sat out of the<\/p>\n
entire limited-overs interlude between the Lanka series, only playing a handful of Ranji matches. Cheteshwar Pujara didn\u2019t feature in the IPL at all, and had a<\/p>\n
lengthy respite between the county season and the Ranji Trophy.<\/p>\n
So, the Sri Lanka series was practically the last opportunity for Kohli to refresh and reboot before the South Africa series. Hence, Kohli had pleaded for workload<\/p>\n
management, lest he burn out. \u201cThat is where the balance needs to be maintained going forward, because if you have too much cricket going on, especially guys<\/p>\n
playing all three formats, it is humanly impossible to maintain same intensity and same level of performance as you do in the earlier phase of the season,\u201d he<\/p>\n
said.<\/p>\n
Kohli\u2019s break, though, gives Rohit a chance to exhibit his captaincy skills. Though he has never captained his country, he has shown his aptitude for Mumbai<\/p>\n
Indians, whom he has steered to three titles in four years. Besides, having cemented his place in ODIs, he is one of the core decision-makers in the side.<\/p>\n
Rohit says it has something he has inculcated in the highly competitive world of Mumbai cricket. \u201cThere were stalwarts in that dressing room, and you have to<\/p>\n
find your place in that playing XI, so you have to be more disciplined and bring something to the table every now and then,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even the supremely fit Virat Kohli can get exhausted and feel the rigours of calendar-congestion. A day before the start of the series, in Kolkata, he hinted in as many words that he required rest. \u201cI\u2019m not a robot, you can slice my skin and check I bleed. I too need rest,\u201d he said. Heeding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11468,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11466\/revisions\/11468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}