India tour of South Africa 2018: 4 areas of concern despite a successful ODI series victory

#4 Running Between The Wickets

The Indian top order needs to reach a consensus, and reach it fast.

Are cheeky singles more important than the wicket of Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli? Too often, and Rohit Sharma in particular is guilty of causing most of them, one of the three is involved in a run-out.

While I'm a big fan of Kohli's ability to rotate the strike and steal singles, either the rest of the team needs to step up to his level or he would need to neutralise it slightly, as his eagerness has often affected his own dismissal as well.

In this situation I must point a certain contradiction - you would never find Kohli trying to chastise Yuvraj Singh or Chris Gayle to take a quick single or double. It seems that Kohli either trusts them to cover up or considers their wicket too valuable to lose to laggard running that the veterans are now prone to.

However, this value does not extend to Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane or Kedar Jadhav (since MS Dhoni is probably the only person who runs well with Kohli, probably because Kohli leaves the entire judgement to the senior) - which can prove disastrous as Team India's winning formula involves one of the top 3 batting through.

This is definitely an area to work on for the otherwise magnificent Indian trio.