I Am Sure It's A Weight Off His Shoulders- Tim Southee On Virat Kohli's Removal As ODI Captain

New Zealand pacer Tim Southee believes Indian batsman, Virat Kohli, can rest easy now that the burden of captaincy has been lifted from him in two formats.

Kohli was replaced as captain by Rohit Sharma in both ODIs and T20Is. While T20Is was his choice, the BCCI decided to remove him from the ODI captaincy as they did not prefer having two separate captains for the white-ball formats.

Speaking about the change in captaincy in an interview with Amazon Prime Video, who have become the new streaming destination of all Kiwi home games.

“I don’t know what it was like to captain India and the pressures that come with it. Not only that but IPL as well. He’s done it over a period of time. It will be interesting from a fan point of view to see him put all his energies on the captaincy and channel them into his batting and fielding. I am sure it’s a weight off his shoulders, and the person that he is, he will be contributing in some leadership form or another throughout the rest of his playing days,” Southee mentioned.

“Haven’t had to bowl much to him as Kyle Jamieson has taken care of him” – Tim Southee

Tim Southee also pointed out that he hasn’t had to bowl much to the 32-year-old Kohli since tall pacer and the latest addition to the Kiwi pace attack, Kyle Jamieson, has had Kohli’s number of late.

“We have been very lucky as a bowling group against Virat. The addition of Kyle Jamieson has done a lot for us. I haven’t had to bowl for him as much because Kyle has been the man to take care of him,” Southee said.

When asked about the dip in form that Kohli has been going through in all formats, Southee said it was always coming considering the level that the Indian Test skipper was playing at.

“I guess it happens when you bat the way Virat bats and score the volume of runs he gets, you have set such high standards. Then, for some games or however long he has not been as amazing as we are used to seeing,” he added.

India recently defeated New Zealand 3-0 in the T20I series at home before securing the 2-match Test series by a 1-0 margin.

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