‘I think they should have played Virat Kohli’ – Sanjay Manjrekar wants Virat Kohli to play more International matches

Virat Kohli has not scored a century in the last two and a half years. The batter has been out of the top 10 spots both in the Test and T20I rankings. Kohli once topped all-three formats for a long time, however, he is currently enduring the worst patch in his cricketing career.

Many former players has backed the star batter and asserted that the latter will come back to form. Ricky Ponting, recently, remarked that he would fear an opposition that has Virat Kohli’s name in it. Usman Khawaja backed the player by mentioning the player’s average.

Indian commentator and former India player Sanjay Manjrekar, meanwhile, has come up with a different observation. He opines that Virat Kohli must have played a lot of matches that he missed. During an interaction in Sports18 ‘Sports over the top’ show, Manjrekar said that Kohli must play matches to gain form and feels that he has had enough rest.

“I think they should have played Virat Kohli in every international match possible, whatever the format because Virat has had his breaks. People are advocating that he should take some breaks and he’s had his breaks. If you look at the last two years, he’s not played a lot of International cricket,” Sanjay Manjrekar said.

He said that there could be a logic behind giving Virat Kohli's some time off from the game but, according to him, Kohli should have played those games.

“Maybe there’s some logic there that we don’t know about. Maybe they had a chat with Virat Kohli, but my personal view is the more Virat Kohli would’ve played and especially these matches would’ve been better for him”, he added.

Virat Kohli was rested for the entire West Indies series. In addition to that, his rest has been extended for the Zimbabwe series as well. Reports revealed that the batter had spoken to selectors about his availability for the Asia Cup 2022.