India skipper Virat Kohli has said that Shikhar Dhawan will have his full support when the 31-year old makes a return to the ODI team after a long injury lay-off. The southpaw was dropped after sustaining a thumb injury during the Kolkata Test against New Zealand in October.
Prior to the injury, the Delhi batsman was severely criticised for his dismal run with the bat. He had scored only 138 runs in the four-match Test series in the West Indies before losing his opening spot to KL Rahul. Dhawan then opened the innings in the Kolkata Test after Rahul was injured but his scores in the two innings were 1 and 17. To strike form, he played in the Ranji Trophy after recovering from injury but failed to find his form again. In five innings, he scored only 125 runs and as expected his selection in the squad for the upcoming ODI series has raised a lot of eyebrows.
Dhawan has managed to silent the critics after scoring 63 in the first practice game against England and Kohli hopes the southpaw continues the same form when he dons the Indian jersey.
Speaking ahead of the first ODI, he said:” Everyone is aware of his (Shikhar Dhawan) abilities. You try to keep a player like Shikhar in a good health space because once he is cleared in his head, he can really take the game away from the opposition. That is something we try to do, give him as much space as possible, not speak too much about the game. That’s something I like to do. Knowing the kind of player Shikhar is, the kind of person he is, it’s better to leave a guy like that to his own planning and own thinking rather than giving your plans to him because he is so instinctive, once he gets going, he finds more options than anyone else.
“Once he is in the game and he has momentum, I have seen guys struggling to bowl at him when he is in full flow. So, it’s all about giving him his own space to prepare initially. In One-Day cricket, I still feel that he possesses lot of qualities and ability to set up the game for the other batsmen. He bats long as well once he gets going, so he has a lot of positives, that’s what we always back Shikhar on,” he concluded.