Former India wicketkeeper-batter Surinder Khanna has sought benching out of form senior batters Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in the wake of the 184-run loss against Australia at Melbourne Cricket Ground on Monday.
India captain Rohit, who missed the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series in Perth, has been a disaster on the tour while trying to find his pocket of scoring runs. Across five innings in three Tests, he has only managed 31 runs.
Not only that, but the Indian captain has changed his batting position from middle order to top order and still got nothing out of it.
Kohli, on the other hand, has not been able to repeat his Perth century knock in the last 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. He had shown some good technique in the first innings of the Boxing Day Test and faltered from there on, failing to convert a stable start into 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 come back, he has batted at number five and also as an opener but he's not making runs. And that is something Gambhir, the selectors, and even Rohit himself is not talking about. You want to have the backbone to tell the captain and Virat Kohli to get down and talk to them one on one so somebody else can bat. You expect your senior cricketers to make runs but they're totally out of form. You have to take some tough decisions for good results. The board will let these players state their case but the writing's on the wall," he 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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