The Indian men’s cricket team, who have been experimenting with the squad in the limited-overs cricket and mainly in the shortest format for the T20 World Cup, will not treat the upcoming ODI series against New Zealand as a preparatory platform for the quadrennial tournament.
Speaking ahead of the first ODI in Hamilton, Indian skipper Virat Kohli on Tuesday said that instead of the 50-overs series the IPL will be the “right platform” to prepare for the T20 World Cup to be held in Australia later this year.
“We have had five T20s already, it’s not that we don’t have a lot of T20 cricket. We have IPL as well which is going to be a month and a half of T20 cricket. So we will probably utilise that, I think, because last year (for ODI World Cup) you did not have much opportunity to prepare yourselves apart from the games that were in front of you,” PTI quoted Kohli as saying on the eve of the first ODI in Hamilton on Wednesday.
“But T20s is very different, as I said. IPL is probably the most competitive tournament you can ask for as a collective and guys will look to get into that frame of mind in that tournament and not this early in a 50-over format because you don’t want to play in a different manner,” he added.
Kohli further said that each format should be respected accordingly and the mindset of the players should be different in ODI cricket than what it is in T20Is and, thus, he has confirmed that the Indian team are not looking at the series as preparation for the T20 World Cup.
“These things are all about creating good habits for different formats and then being able to switch between them. So no, we are not looking at this series as preparation for T20 World Cup. IPL is going to be the right platform for that,” the 31-year-old said.
India will head into the series high on confidence after whitewashing the home team in the five-match T20I series. Kohli’s team will also take inspiration from the last time they fared against the Blackcaps in an ODI assignment. India won 4-1 last year with three back-to-back wins in the first three matches.
“The last time around, when we played here, we dominated the first three games. Lost the fourth and came back in the fifth one again. We felt we had more time to work out our plans in the ODIs actually. The T20 format was something that suited New Zealand more as they could play some explosive cricket and really did come after our side but in one-day cricket, we have played some really hard-fought series,” Kohli added.