Even though it was an optional practice session in Delhi, the focus was not on the homeboy Virat Kohli. Instead, all eyes were on three batters who scored a duck each against Australia. In fact, Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer all hit the nest in Delhi ahead of IND vs AFG clash after a no-show against Australia. All three batted with Rahul Dravid closely watching the duck trio at the nets 24 hours before the India vs Afghanistan ODI World Cup game.
Ishan Kishan was dismissed by Mitchell Starc for a golden duck. Rohit Sharma fell to Josh Hazlewood for a 6-ball duck while Shreyas Iyer also fell to the same bowler for a 3-ball duck.
Yet to open their accounts, all three batters reached out to Rahul Dravid ahead of IND vs AFG clash on Wednesday. Rohit Sharma has had difficulties against left-arm pacers and Afghanistan have Fazalhaq Farooqi as the left-arm seamer.
For Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer, they perished to poor shots. Ishan Kishan tried to play a sixth-stump delivery off Starc while Iyer gave away his wicket trying to play an aggressive shot.
During the practice session, Rahul Dravid spent some time discussing with Rohit Sharma. Not that Rohit needs any time adjusting his technique, but some advice from Dravid would be helpful ahead of some important fixtures including IND vs PAK on Saturday.
Meanwhile, despite his failure against Australia, batting coach Vikram Rathour has backed Shreyas Iyer to continue at the crucial No 4 spot. He said, there is no plan to promote KL Rahul to No 4.
“No, not at the moment because he is doing so well at number 5 and Shreyas has done really well for us at number 4. So absolutely no temptations,” Rathour said at the pre-match presser.
Ishan Kishan struggles
However, it wasn’t a great session for Ishan Kishan. As per a RevSportz report, Ishan was up against a variety of net bowlers including leg-spinners and pacers. But he looked completely out of sorts as a net bowler shattered his stumps. Soon, another pacer forced an inside edge to his stumps. And following that, Ishan turned to Rahul Dravid and the two had a 15-minute discussion.
However, his struggles did not end there. As he continued to edge and mishit, throw-down specialists replaced net bowlers.
India Squad for Cricket World Cup 2023
Batters: Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav
WKs: Ishan Kishan, KL Rahul (VC)
Seam all-rounders: Shardul Thakur
Spin all-rounders: Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin
Seamers: Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna
Spinner: Kuldeep Yadav
Editors pick
