BCCI Secretary, Jay Shah has asked the fans to not ask veteran cricketers Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma to play in Duleep Trophy. BCCI had made a rule at the start of the year that every central contracted players need to play domestic cricket. Younger players like Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shreyas Iyer, Shubman Gill and Ishan Kishan are taking part in the tournament.
However, there were reports that Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Sharma will be part of the Duleep Trophy to prepare for the series against Bangladesh. However, when the squads came out, they were not part of any of the four teams.
Shah insisted that players like Kohli and Sharma should not be forced to play Duleep Trophy in order to prevent them from injury. Moreover, he added that Kohli and Sharma have been long servants of Indian Cricket and hence they should be treated with respect.
“We should not insist on players like Rohit and Virat to play in the Duleep Trophy. They will risk injury,” Shah stated while interacting to Times Of India.
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have already retired from the T20I format
India under captain Sharma became champions of the T20 World Cup 2024. The 37-year-old shone as a batter and also as the leader in the tournament. Kohli, while opening the innings with Sharma, did not have fruitful tournament until the final, where he stepped up with India at 34-3 and scored an all-important 76 runs to lead India to a score of 176 in their 20 overs. Indian bowlers defended it and as a result India beat South Africa by 7 runs to clinch the trophy.
Both the players announced their retirement from this format in order to focus on the other two formats, manage their workload and allow the younger players to be part of the T20Is. Both of them came back during the ODI series against Sri Lanka under new head coach, Gautam Gambhir. However, India lost the series by 2-0. All the batters barring Rohit Sharma suffered against the spinners. Kohli did not find it easy to get going against the spinners and perished in all the three matches.
