End of road for Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in T20Is? Rahul Dravid’s statement surprise fans

Team India are currently busy playing the three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka at home. On 5 January 2023, they locked horns in Pune for the second match. However, the visitors managed to win the match by 16 runs. Thus, the series came to level terms with one more match to go.

However, the current India team is quite young. Senior players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma took a rest from the series. Only four players Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, and Suryakumar Yadav were part of the second T20I from the playing XI in the 20-20 World Cup 2022 semi-final against England. Regarding that, team India head coach Rahul Dravid opened up about the chance of senior players in the shortest format of the game.

"Nobody wants to bowl wides or no-balls, in this format it can hurt you badly.” - Rahul Dravid

While speaking to reporters after the second game, Rahul Dravid said: "For us, obviously, from the last semi-final (in the 20-20 World Cup) that we played against England, only 3-4 boys are playing in the XI (against Sri Lanka). We are slightly in a different stage of looking at the next cycle of 20-20, so ours is a slightly younger team and for us to play against the quality of Sri Lanka is a fantastic experience. The good thing is that a lot of focus is on the ODI World Cup and World Test Championship, so the 20-20 give us the opportunity to try out these guys."              

"Nobody wants to bowl wides or no-balls, in this format it can hurt you badly. We've got to be patient with these young kids. There are a lot of young kids playing, especially in bowling, and they will have games like this at times,” Dravid said on Arshdeep Singh.  

“We need to understand that. We try to help them technically, support them and create the right environment. They are very skillful, they are learning. It's tough to learn on the job in international cricket, so we must be patient," Rahul Dravid concluded.