India seamer Arshdeep Singh says it is a “blessing” to share the dressing room with talismanic Virat Kohli and he won’t read too much into the batting stalwart’s eight-ball-duck in the first ODI that the visitors lost by seven wickets to Australia.
Arshdeep feels that being a master of 50-over cricket, Kohli will score runs in the remaining two games of this series.
“He has played more than 300 matches for India, so form is just a word for him,” Arshdeep said at the post-match media conference.
“He knows how to get going. It is always like a blessing to be in the same dressing room with him, and going forward I feel there’ll be a lot of runs for him in this series as well.” Asked how does Kohli feel about playing just one format, Arshdeep kept his guard up.
“….talking about the format he is playing, he has mastered this one. So I don’t know how he feels about it. I will ask him about his feelings, and maybe tell you in the next press conference.” The left-arm seamer is still very new to Shubman Gill’s style of white ball captaincy but he expects the young skipper to be a bowlers’ captain like his illustrious predecessors Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
Since Arshdeep is yet to play Test cricket and this was Gill’s first game as ODI skipper, the left-arm speedster didn’t want to get into a comparison about how the new captain looks at the game compared to the two elder statesmen.
“I have played very less ODIs, so I can’t tell the difference yet, but I would say both of them were proper bowlers’ captains.
“They gave you proper freedom and even today Shubman, he backed whatever plans we had, and he said, bowl freely to your plans and just enjoy the moment,” Arshdeep said about his state-mate with whom he has shared the dressing room since their age-group days.
“We knew we didn’t have that many runs, but we just wanted to express ourselves, that was his message.” Arshdeep said that the Optus Stadium track was a good one and it was the frequent rain breaks that affected the concentration of the batters.
“If you spend time on this wicket, then the runs were coming, but it was very important to spend time on the wicket whoever was set. We saw the partnership between KL and Axar,” he said citing an example.
“But with frequent stoppages, it became very difficult for the batter to maintain concentration. And the credit also goes to Australian bowlers. They bowled in very good areas, they got a lot of help from the wicket,” he added.
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