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He is expected to be back for the second and third matches of the series
Virat Kohli hasn’t played a T20I since the T20 World Cup in 2022 • ICC via Getty Images
Virat Kohli will miss the first T20I against Afghanistan in Mohali on Friday. India coach Rahul Dravid confirmed on the eve of the match that Kohli would be unavailable for personal reasons, and would be back for the second and third games of the series in Indore and Bengaluru.
“Virat Kohli will miss the first game due to personal reasons,” Dravid said. “He will be playing from the second and third T20I.”
The three-match series against Afghanistan is notable for Kohli – and India captain Rohit Sharma – returning to T20Is for the first time since the T20 World Cup semi-final defeat to England in November 2022. Both players took a break from the format in this period in order to focus on the two longer formats with India playing the World Test Championship final and the ODI World Cup in 2023.
“There’s been quite a few ICC events over the last two, three years, and a lot of them back to back,” Dravid said. “So there’s not been a lot of time in between these ICC events. At various stages, in the last couple of years that I’ve been here, we’ve had to prioritise certain formats, certain tournaments, simply because just the amount of cricket that is being played, and just managing the players, it’s impossible for all the players to be playing all the time.
“So we’ve always had to to prioritise what is important, especially for the guys who are playing all the three formats. Even in this series, people such as [Jasprit] Bumrah, [Ravindra] Jadeja and [Mohammed] Siraj have missed out because keeping in mind the five Test matches that we have against England. So you’re always playing that juggling act a little bit over the last two years.”
The Afghanistan series is India’s last T20I assignment before the T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the USA in June, and represents the last chance outside the IPL – which is scheduled to run from March 29 to May 26 – for players to stake their claim for the tournament. While Rohit and Kohli boast immense experience and knowhow, they could be competing with a number of young batters who have come into the India side over recent months and shown immense ability.
“Obviously, for the large part of the last year, and after the last T20 World Cup, we had prioritised the one-day World Cup. There has not been a lot of games after the one-day World Cup for us in terms of the T20 format,” Dravid said. “So this T20 World Cup is slightly different from that perspective, in the sense that there’s not been a lot of time to prepare for it. So we have to rely obviously on the cricket that we have. And also a little bit on the IPL. But the boys will play T20 cricket. So they’ll be playing here, they’ll play the IPL. We might not get many opportunities to play together, so we’ll just have to work around that.
“You just have to adapt and be flexible. We had a really good preparation leading into the one-day World Cup; even before the last T20 World Cup, I thought we had a lot of games together as a group. This time, we probably won’t have that and it is a question of adapting and going with it.”
Dravid also confirmed that Yashasvi Jaiswal would open along with Rohit in Mohali. With Kohli absent, India could move Shubman Gill – who usually opens the batting – to No. 3, or slot either Sanju Samson or Tilak Varma in at that position. The entire top six is set to wear an unfamiliar look, with the injured Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya also unavailable for the series.
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