'The quality of a player never goes down..' Rohit Sharma defends Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli has been in poor form for a while now and his poor form continued in the T20I series against England. He scored 1 run in the second T20I and 11 runs in the third T20I even though he looked in good touch in the second T20I as he hit David Willey for a four and six but got caught at covers. Captain Rohit Sharma confirmed that Kohli's aggressive batting approach was both personal and team's need. 

"It's a bit of both We, as a team want to play in a certain way, and every player needs to buy into that thought process. Otherwise, you know, it's not gonna happen for you. And all the players, all the batters, who are part of this squad, are willing to take that extra risk and go and see what extra they can do with the bat. You know, it's important to find out within yourself, to try and do different kinds of things and unless you try it you will never be able to find out. So I think it is something that we've been trying to do for a while now."-  India's Captain Rohit Sharma.

"We need to get used to playing freely. When you try to play freely, it comes with its failures both in individual performance and in team results, but you get to learn a lot from that. We are looking at the bigger picture, not the small picture. As it is, in India we are used to two-and-a-half-hour pictures. All these matches are crucial for us because somewhere we need to change something, and we can see things have started to change slightly.

Rohit Sharma also responded to Kapil Dev's statement who said - "If world no.2 test bowler Ashwin can be dropped from the test side then your no.1 batter (Virat Kohli) can also be dropped". Skipper Rohit Sharma disagreed with Kapil Dev's statement and said he is watching the game from outside.

"They are seeing from outside, they don't know what's happening inside the team. We have a thought process, we make the team, we debate and discuss it and think a lot about it. The players are backed, they are given opportunities. People on the outside don't know about it. So it's more important about what's happening within our team, that's important for me.

"If you talk of form, it goes up and down for everyone. The quality of a player never goes down. We should remember that. And we back that quality, and back them based on their quality. It has happened with me, it has happened with XYZ, it has happened with everyone, it is nothing new. When some player has done so well consistently for so long, that can't be written off in one or two series or one or two years. It takes people time to understand it completely, but those who are running the team know the importance of that quality." - said Indian Skipper

India won their fourth consecutive T20I series against England. Suryakumar Yadav scored a century but India kept losing wickets from one end as India lost the third T20I by 17 runs but won the T20I series by 2-1. Suryakumar Yadav becomes the fifth Indian player to score a T20I century.