Champions Trophy: Team India still needs Kohli and Rohit, says Shikhar Dhawan

It’s not without reason that Shikhar Dhawan, who retired last year, has been named one of the ambassadors of the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy.

The dashing southpaw ranks right up there in third place among the all-time highest run-getters of the marquee ODI tournament — thanks to retaining his 'top run-getter' status on the leaderboard for both the editions he played in 2013 (363 runs) and 2017 (338).

A guest of honour during the India–Pakistan game in Dubai on Sunday, Dhawan — nicknamed ‘Gabbar’ for his trademark moustache — felt the Indian team has it in them to go all the way.

And they need both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma well beyond this tournament, he believes. ‘’They have got a lot of cricket left in them and you can see that here. It’s very important for juniors in the team to look up to such seniors,’’ Dhawan said during an informal chat with mediapersons on the sidelines of the match.

The ‘Hitman’ opened up well against Shaheen Afridi & Co., before a peach of an yorker felled him for 41. However, Kohli went on to get his 51^st ODI century — an effort that saw him clawing his way back into the Top 5 of the ICC ODI batting rankings.

It was almost prophetic, for Dhawan had earlier pinned his hopes on fellow Delhi boy Kohli in the face of queries about his dip in form: ‘’He is a human being, after all… It just takes one knock to get everything right. He is not called ‘King Kohli’ for nothing.’’

Dhawan — who completed with 17 ODI centuries and 39 fifties between 2010 and 2022 — played the senior partner to Rohit Sharma, as they forged arguably the most profitable opening partnership in white ball cricket in the post Tendulkar–Ganguly era.

Significantly enough, their run started with the 2013 Champions Trophy in England, when captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni pitchforked a younger Sharma into the vanguard.

Reflecting on the art of opening partnerships, Dhawan feels things have changed in today’s white ball cricket: ‘’Now, it’s good to take aerial shots and Rohit takes that extra risk."

Dhawan prediction carries some weight, given his own enormously successful IPL career and status as the second-highest scorer of all time in the League (right after Kohli), with a tally of 6,769 runs.

After two back-to-back wins, the Men in Blue are already in the semi-finals with a league game to spare — which is against the Kiwis on 2 March (Sunday). They have resumed their practice after a two-day break in Dubai on Wednesday, 26 February, and would like to maintain a winning momentum ahead of the last four clash on 4 March.

Meanwhile, the one-sided nature of the India vs Pakistan contests in recent times has raised a debate: is the hype over this match misplaced?

Dhawan would tend to agree: ‘’We are certainly dominating this contest in recent times. The problem with Pakistan is they have been depending a lot on one or two batters...

“But they have continued to produce the bowlers — they have been always strong in this department, with the likes of Wasim [Akram], Waqar [Younis] and Shoaib [Akhtar] before as well,’’ Dhawan observes.

Asked to pick his favourite India–Pakistan contest, he zeroes in on the century he scored in the 2018 Asia Cup in Dubai.

‘’I thought I could tell my next generation that I have got a century against Pakistan too,’’ he adds with a hearty laugh.