Veteran opener Wasim Jaffer suggested that the Chattogram wicket for the 3rd ODI is expected to be good for batting and he expects batting mavericks Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan to get triple-digit scores against Bangladesh. Team India has already lost the series 0-2 and the pressure is on the senior batters to get the team over the line in the last match as the Indian batting has struggled miserably in the first two matches.
Kohli, who enjoyed great form with the bat in the 2022 T20 World Cup, failed to score big in the first two ODIs and was dismissed on just 9 and 5.
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While Shikhar Dhawan, who was the captain of the Indian side for the New Zealand ODIs, has not been able to score consistently well this year in the 50-over format.
The southpaw has scored just one half-century in the last 10 ODI innings which is not a good sign for him and the team.
Jaffer feels that everybody knows Kohli and Dhoni’s potential but it’s time for them to score centuries to return to form.
“I think it is high time that the top three, especially Kohli and Dhawan start scoring hundreds, because we know their potential. As I said earlier, the wicket in Chattogram will be good, so I am expecting hundreds from both Kohli and Dhawan,” Jaffer told ESPNCrincinfo.
India will host next year’s ODI World Cup but the form of India’s top 3 – Rohit Sharma, Dhawan and Kohli is not a good sign for them.
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Jaffer pointed out that during the 2019 ODI WC, the Men in Blue were very much over-reliant on the top 3 to score big centuries but things have completely changed now as the middle-order is stepping up while the top-order is struggling miserably.
“Hopefully, we get to see hundreds from both Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan. When we look at the time around the 2019 World Cup, we were too reliant on our top three batters, and the middle order was not responding well at that time. Now the situation has changed and it is quite different. If we look at the last 50-60 matches, there is only one century from our top three batters and our middle order has performed well,” Jaffer said.
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