Ahead of the third Test at Rajkot, star England batter Joe Root admitted that a team has to keep players like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli away from scoring runs to win the series.
Talking about the ongoing five-match series, Rohit has not been able to make a mark despite getting starts in the two Tests as he has scores of 24, 39, 14, and 13 runs respectively. Kohli pulled off his name from the first two matches due to personal reasons.
The right-hand batter spoke about the talks that take place in the dressing room and other places to decide the game plans for the match.
“We don’t really do team meetings anymore. That’s one of the great things about how we do all of our conversations away from the game and just that enjoyment and buzz about spending time with each other. We don’t have to sit in a meeting room and I think it’s more authentic and more genuine when you can have it around a dinner table. Having a coffee in the morning or whatever, I think that’s when you do your best learning,” Root said in an interview with Jio Cinema.
Referring to Rohit and Kohli, he said they were two of the greats of the modern era. “Of course, there’s going to be focus. We know how good they are and they are also very senior within this current Indian batting lineup. So clearly they’ve got a big role to play within this Test team. You want to make sure that you try and get on top of them early. They’ve got the ability to get big scores and we’ve been on the wrong end of that a few times, so it would be nice to try and keep them as quiet as we can throughout the series,” the experienced cricketer added.
Recapping the second Test at Vizag, Yashasvi Jaiswal’s blistering 209 in the first innings and Shubman Gill’s third Test ton combined with a clinical outing with the ball helped India register 106-run victory to level the five-match series 1-1.