Will use IPL to prepare for World T20, not NZ ODIs: Kohli

Hamilton: This is the year of the World T20 and while every team is keeping an eye on preparing for the showpiece event whenever they take the field in limited-overs cricket, India skipper Virat Kohli has made it clear that it is also important to respect the format and there will be enough time to focus on the event that will be played in Australia at the end of the year.

“You have to respect the format, you have to play according to the pace of the 50-over game. 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 you did not have much opportunity to prepare yourselves apart from the games that were in front of you, 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 explained.

Kohli also spoke about the need to make it a habit of performing the roles assigned to the players in the team. “It’s about guys getting settled in their roles and repeating that game after game so that they know I played this in this format, I have to play this in T20s or similarly in Test cricket. 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,” he said.

IANS