New Zealand captain Michael Bracewell stated on Tuesday that it would be “silly to underestimate” Indian batting greats Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma and supported their participation in the ODI World Cup the next year.
The three-match ODI series, which begins on Sunday in Vadodara, will see the return of Kohli and Rohit, who are currently India’s only single-format players. On January 14 and 18, respectively, Rajkot and Indore will host the second and third ODIs.
Bracewell will captain New Zealand in the ODIs since important players like Mitchell Santner, Tom Latham, and Rachin Ravindra are absent from the traveling group.
“I’d like to see them (Rohit and Virat) play in the World Cup. They’re obviously still playing very good cricket so there’s no reason to stop,” Bracewell told the media on the sidelines of the New Zealand Cricket Golf Day, organised by NZC in partnership with TCM Sports at the Willingdon Sports Club, Mumbai.
“They’re both playing beautifully, so why not? Their records speak for themselves, both individually and as a team. They’ve been involved in some great Indian sides and led that side with the bat. You’d be silly to underestimate them, that’s for sure.”
Although it would be difficult to replace players like Santner, Bracewell stated that others will need to fill a similar role.
“It’s a tricky one. Whenever you’re missing players of say, Mitch Santner’s calibre, you’re always going to be struggling to replace them. So, you’re asking guys to come in and do their role as best as they can.”
“You’re never going to be able to replace a guy like that. But if everyone mucks in and does their bit, then hopefully we can all work together and achieve great things on this tour,” Bracewell added.
Bracewell stated that the ODI series still has context, even though the T20 World Cup is just over a month away.
“You have to be where your feet are and take care of what’s in front of you. We’ve obviously got an important one-day series coming up against India.”
“One-day cricket has a lot of different skill-sets involved in it. You have to be able to bat for long periods of time and then apply pressure. We’re gonna spend a little bit of time here leading into the World Cup so, that’s very valuable for us as a team and individually to get used to the conditions,” the 34-year-old added.
Lanky New Zealand all-rounder Kyle Jamieson highlighted a few of the new players.
“We have a couple of new quick bowlers, Michael Rae had a couple of Tests against the West Indies. Kristian Clarke is young up-and-coming all-rounder, he’s (captain) got some talent and we’ve got Jayden Lennox as well, (a) left-arm spinner. So he has a few sort of fresh faces… guys that have played only a handful of games as well,” he said.
According to Jamieson, New Zealand will be more prepared than other countries if they spend a month in India before the T20 World Cup.
“For every team that lands in this country for the T20 World Cup, (they) want to win it and we’re no different,” he said.
“We’ve got a nice month here to try and prepare through the ODIs and the five-match T20I series and certainly we’ll be trying to put our best foot forward to do as well as we can. We’ll be where our feet are and we’ll worry about the first three ODIs and the T20s afterwards and then move on to the challenge of the World Cup,” Jamieson added.
