Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players'He has been prolific; warrants a place in Playing XI': Duminy picks Rohit's opening partner for India at 2023 World Cup
While captain Rohit Sharma is an automatic pick, who is the best fit to partner him is something that will be answered over the course of the next 12 months.
The 2023 World Cup is still less than a year away but teams are already planning what their perfect XI is going to be. For India, it's a problem of plenty as finalising a squad with so many promising youngsters and established seniors could cause a few selections headaches. However, the one position that has always been up for debate is that of the opener. While captain Rohit Sharma is an automatic pick, who is the best fit to partner him is something that will be answered over the course of the next 12 months.
Having said that, former South Africa batter JP Duminy knows his pick to partner Rohit, Duminy feels that the competition is stiff for the position, he would go with Shikhar Dhawan, due to his solid record and consistency in ODIs. The pair of Dhawan and Rohit has proved to be a fruitful alliance for India, having scored 4978 runs in 110 innings in partnerships. This is the fourth-highest of all time and second highest for India after Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.
"He has been prolific for India in this format since 2019. So that's a long period of time and if anyone is doing it as consistently as he is, you would think it would be given that he would be opening the batting for India at the World Cup. I think the question mark is always going to be who is going to be his partner. And I think it's an obvious one in Rohit Sharma," Duminy told Cricket.com
In the last three years, Dhawan has been in great nick in the 50-over format, scoring 1194 runs in 28 matches at a healthy average of 49.75 including two centuries and nine fifties. At the same time, his form in T20Is has taken a dip with 527 runs from 22 games. Bases on such impressive numbers, Duminy has no doubt that the Dhawan-Rohit pair will open for India at next year's World Cup and expects the left-handed batter to score heavily for India.
"Where does a KL Rahul slot in. We have seen him play really well in that middle order. So whose place does he take? I get that those are the questions and conditions are going to be the question mark around that. Dhawan, as we highlighted, has been prolific. Not only from 2019, he has been consistent from a long period of time. He certainly warrants that position and I'm pretty sure he is going to be there scoring runs for India," Duminy pointed out.
