Former Australian leg-spinner Kerry O’Keeffe has predicted that the Australian team will target Indian stalwarts Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in the upcoming Test series. O’Keeffe believes that Australia will try to unsettle Rohit, who is likely to miss the first Test due to the expected birth of his second child, and Kohli, who has been in a recent slump.
O’Keeffe told Fox Sports, “Rohit Sharma may miss one or two Tests, but he is the captain, and Australia always tries to torpedo the visiting captain. It’s been a tactic they’ve used forever, and I think they’ll go very hard at Rohit Sharma.”
O’Keeffe also suggested that Kohli is “slightly weaker” due to his recent form and that the Australian team will try to exploit this. “Kohli, who has worried them (Australia) over the years, what a stunning player he’s been; but in sport, if you sense that the king of the jungle is slightly weaker, you poke a bit of cheek at him,” O’Keeffe said.
However, O’Keeffe believes that Kohli’s form could be the deciding factor in the outcome of the series. “I’m fascinated to see what Virat Kohli ends up with at the end of the summer. It could be the decisive point in the whole summer. If he has an absolutely blazing series, India could win.”
Rohit has managed 588 runs in 11 Tests at an average of just 29.40 this year, while Kohli has accumulated 250 runs in six Test at an average of 22.72.
India’s squad for Border-Gavaskar Series: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Ravindra Jadeja, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Sarfaraz Khan, Virat Kohli, Prasidh Krishna, Rishabh Pant (wk), KL Rahul, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar.
