West Indies won the second ODI at Bridgetown against India by six wickets to level the series 1-1. Batting first, India bowled out in the 41st over with just 181 on board. West Indies chased down the total comfortably with 80 balls to spare and a match-winning half-century by their captain, Shai Hope. Both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were rested for the second ODI and Hardik Pandya was leading the team.
Former India cricketer Aakash Chopra is not pleased with the experimentation and felt the senior duo did not require rest for this match. “I don’t know why Rohit and Virat were rested; they haven’t played a lot of cricket because if you see, after WTC final there was a break of three weeks and there was only seven days of play in the India-WI tests. After that you play one ODI and leave the next. If you want to leave the T20s aside, leave it. I mean even if you don’t play T20s this year, how it is going to affect anyone because we don’t have the T20 WC this year.
Rohit and Kohli anyway, do not feature in T20Is. So, you are relaxing just with the purpose of relaxing,” said Aakash Chopra. Another former India cricketer Abhishek Nayar also believes that the strongest team should play.
“I believe since the time you are six to eight months away from a big tournament, you should play with your strongest eleven, unless there is
an injury.
